


History

by Annerb



Series: Down Here Among the Wreckage [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, Apocafic, Darkfic, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-07
Updated: 2008-07-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:07:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22748314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annerb/pseuds/Annerb
Summary: Five years ago, SG-1 broke in half. Two years ago, Earth lost. Today, there is one last chance to fix things. But sometimes the pieces just don’t fit back together again.
Relationships: Samantha "Sam" Carter/Jack O'Neill
Series: Down Here Among the Wreckage [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1635658
Comments: 3
Kudos: 44





	1. Prologue

Daniel hasn’t thought about Sam much over the years. At first because it hurt too much, and later because he honestly had much more important things on his mind, like Anubis and trying not to die. There simply hadn’t been time to mourn old losses, not with so many fresh ones to deal with.  
  
When he did allow his mind to turn to her on occasion, wondering what she was doing, where she was, this is not what he imagined. Never for a moment did he think she would be on a planet as primitive as this one, as distant and detached from what is going on in the galaxy.  
  
On Cimmeria, time stands still, not all that different than the last time he was here, half a dozen years and a lifetime ago. Here on this insignificant planet, Thor’s Hammer and the Protected Planets Treaty ensure that no one cares what Anubis may be up to, or that Earth is his favorite playground.  
  
Daniel feels the familiar twist of anger his stomach, maliciously wondering how long delicate, sheltered Cimmeria will stand against Anubis when he finally gets around to finishing off the Asgard. Will they expect the Tau’ri to rush to their aid?  
  
How will they feel when they realize no one is coming?  
  
There is a whisper of conscience somewhere reminding Daniel that this isn’t what he’s supposed to be like, but anger may be the only thing still holding him together so he ignores it. Always ignores it.  
  
They always said he’s the constant one.  
  
Focusing back on the woman in front of him, Daniel takes in the long hair intricately braided into a single plait over one shoulder. Her clothing is homespun, rough fabric gathered across her shoulders, billowing outward until cinching in at her waist above a full, rusty colored skirt. Her bare toes peak out just under the hem.  
  
There is hardly anything left to identify her as Sam Carter. In fact, the only recognizable element is her rapt attention on the task before her, the unyielding concentration on the project in her hands. Only rather than a computer, book, or piece of technology, it’s a small square of cloth and the silver flash of a needle as she works small details into the surface.  
  
The walls of her small two-room home are covered in complex quilts that look like star charts and fractals, and he’s torn between laughing and raging. Is this really what the great Sam Carter has become? A glorified seamstress?  
  
Her hands haven’t stopped working the cloth since they arrived. Daniel wants to rip it from her hands. Earth is gone. They’d lost. Doesn’t that mean anything to her?  
  
Doesn’t it mean anything that they have one last chance to make everything right?  
  
“Sam,” he says, reining in his anger long enough to kneel down in front of her, one hand reaching out to touch her knee. She tenses under the contact and he feels another beat of disappointment. He thought five years would have been enough…to what? Heal her? Bring her back?  
  
So much for his starry-eyed optimism dying with the rest of Earth.  
  
Fool.  
  
He removes his hand, sitting back on his heels, and tries to get her attention even for a moment, looking for some sign that she’s listening. “We really need your help.”  
  
She doesn’t look up, doesn’t respond, her eyes intent on the methodical movement of her fingers.  
  
“Dammit, Sam!” he snaps, his hand closing over the cloth. He barely resists tugging it from her grasp, too many nights with no sleep, too many friends and colleagues dead to hold his temper. “Are you even listening?”   
  
“Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c says, the warning clear.   
  
Daniel pushes back to his feet, pacing away from her until he’s staring blindly at a wall, sucking in a breath in an attempt to rein his frayed temper.  
  
Teal’c is speaking now, laying out their most recent Hail Mary plan to defeat Anubis in an even voice, explaining why they need her. Daniel lets the words flow over him, trying to ignore the hollowness of them. In front of him, one of Sam’s quilts comes into focus and this close he can see her tiny stitches across the puckered surface of bright colors and abstract patterns.  
  
Glyphs and equations and constellations are rendered in precise, miniscule lengths of thread. He reaches out, running his hand down the surface.  
  
 _Oh, Sam_ , he thinks, the anger dropping away only to uncover a deeper well of anguish. Now he remembers why anger is so fundamental. Without it, it’s too easy to get sucked down. Like Sam.  
  
How did everything get this far?  
  
Behind him Teal’c’s voice abruptly halts mid-sentence and Daniel turns to see Sam’s hand on his arm, her eyes boring into his. Having ensured the attention of both men, she holds out one hand, mimicking writing across her palm.  
  
Daniel digs through his pack, pulling out a notebook and pen, his heart thudding.  
  
Maybe…  
  
Sam takes them from him carefully, pausing to let her fingers slide across the smooth surface of the paper as if a precious thing. Shaking herself free of the moment, she haltingly writes a single line of text, flipping the notebook closed when she finishes.   
  
Pushing to her feet, Sam hands the notebook and pen back to Daniel and reaches for the quilt he’d touched, pulling it down and folding it carefully before handing it to Teal’c.  
  
Teal’c receives it solemnly, his hand pressing over hers for a moment as he takes it. Sam reaches up and touches his cheek, her eyes traveling over his face.  
  
Teal’c is the one to break contact, stepping back away.   
  
Sam nods once, her eyes sad, and then turns and disappears further back into the rear of her house.  
  
Daniel follows Teal’c out the front door, squinting against the sun.  
  
“Well?” Cam asks, jumping up from the stump he’s been sitting on, meeting them eagerly.  
  
Daniel shakes his head, Cam’s eternal optimism grating against his skin.  
  
“She’s not going to help us?” Cam asks. He’s heard stories about the great Sam Carter for years, the accolades that have taken on near mythic proportions after all this time. He wants to believe she is capable of anything.   
  
Daniel remembers that, too.   
  
“Why not?” Cam asks, looking back at the modest home.  
  
As they head down the hill towards the gate, Daniel hands the notebook to Cam, letting Sam’s words speak for her.  
  
 _Some things you just don’t come back from._


	2. Fragments

_Five years earlier…_  
  
“Master!”  
  
A brash young Jaffa, one who has yet to don his first full suit of armor, bursts into the tent. Bra’tac frowns at the youth’s willful disregard for protocol.  
  
The Jaffa stumbles to a halt, clapping his fist belatedly across his chest, bowing his head. “Forgive me, Master,” he says, visibly trying to rein in his impatience.  
  
Bra’tac simply grunts, pushing himself reluctantly back to his feet. Since the death of Apophis, a death O’Neill promised would actually ‘stick’ this time, it has become harder and harder to reconcile heady freedom with the discipline necessary to the life of a Jaffa. It is one thing to question, another to abandon all traditions. Just another difficulty on the path of freedom, one Bra’tac is more than happy to be burdened with.  
  
There was a time Bra’tac sent such young warriors to their deaths for nothing but the ego of a false god. Those days are past.  
  
“Speak, Arnok,” Bra’tac barks when the youth continues to shuffle nervously. Inwardly, Bra’tac smiles when Arnok flinches. Ah, for the foolishness of youth.  
  
“Master,” Arnok finally manages to say. “A woman has come through the _chappa’ai_.”  
  
“A woman?” Bra’tac repeats, all amusement draining away. “Human?”  
  
“Yes, Master,” he confirms.  
  
“Take me to her immediately.”  
  
Bra’tac follows Arnok through the tents of the training camp, pushing their pace only as fast as is proper. His heart thumps with hope he knows is imprudent, wishing he could lift his robes and sprint for the _chappa’ai_.   
  
‘Perhaps foolishness is not the sole province of youth after all,’ he thinks with a wry grimace.  
  
Once on the forest path and out of view of the tents, Bra’tac urges Arnok out of his sedate pace. “I am not so old that we need crawl!”  
  
Less than five minutes later they break out of the trees. Near the gate he can see a collection of half a dozen Jaffa all loosely grouped around a figure.  
  
Bra’tac nearly stumbles to a stop when he catches his first clear view of the woman.  
  
Praise whatever true deity may exist, it is she.  
  
She sits on the top step, her back nearly against the _chappa’ai_ , a most imprudent place to linger if the great mouth were to open.  
  
“Jaffa!” Bra’tac calls, gesturing for the men to fall back even farther.  
  
They open a path in front of him and he warily approaches the woman, studying her as he does. She appears unharmed, but her formless smock of indeterminate color is something Bra’tac recognizes as the clothes given to long-term prisoners of the Goa’uld.  
  
She doesn’t move or look up as he nears.  
  
“Major Carter?” he says, one hand daring to reach out to touch her shoulder.  
  
Her blue eyes remain unfocused, intent only on the dirt at her feet.  
  
She is stillness.   
  
And Bra’tac begins to understand.  
  
They are all fools when it comes to hope.  
  
* * *  
  
George Hammond lowers the red phone back to its cradle, feeling weariness settle into his bones, a deep ache that makes him wonder, not for the first time, if he is too old for this job. He’s damn tired of losing good people, of sitting behind this desk and filling out forms.  
  
Two papers sit in front of him at the moment, both waiting for a signature that will declare two people presumed dead and end the eight-week long search for them.  
  
It feels like giving up, too much like betrayal. But when the red phone speaks, it’s his job to comply.  
  
He imagines, for a moment, Jack O’Neill sitting across from him, his posture casual but his expression intense.   
  
‘That’s bullshit, George, and you know it.’  
  
“True enough,” George says, picking up his pen with real regret.  
  
Before the first signature seals anyone’s fate though, the red lights flash, a warning called out over the loud speakers. “Unauthorized off-world activation!”  
  
George doesn’t dare to hope, but pushes out of his chair just the same.  
  
“Receiving Master Bra’tac’s IDC, sir,” Walter informs him when he reaches the control room.  
  
“Open the iris.”   
  
When the iris peels back, two people emerge from the wormhole, both very familiar.  
  
For a moment after the first figure steps through, George thinks he may be hallucinating, his own hopes materializing into an apparition, but then he hears the harsh in-takes of those around him, knowing they are seeing the same thing he is.  
  
“Get SG-1 in here,” George orders.   
  
Half-listening to the call over the speakers, George looks down at the woman he’d just been about to declare dead.  
  
Sam is backlit by the wormhole she just walked through. Bra’tac stands to one side, his hand hovering near her back, not touching as if he’s scared to make contact, but still unsure that she’ll remain standing on her own. George has rarely seen the Jaffa Master so disconcerted.  
  
She doesn’t look injured, but something about the way she holds herself doesn’t sit right with George. They learned a long time ago that not all injuries are visible. Or physical.  
  
“Get a medical team up here,” he says to Walter.  
  
The wormhole blinks out behind the two unmoving figures and still, neither of them speak.  
  
Below, Daniel has reached the gate room, coming to a stop at the base of the ramp, the same disbelief mixed with crushing relief on his face that George feels. They haven’t seen Sam in eight long weeks, and, as evidenced by the forms on his desk, had begun to fear they never would again.  
  
“Sam?” Daniel asks, his hands twitching against his sides as if fighting back the urge to rush up the ramp towards her.   
  
There’s no outward reaction from Sam, not even the slightest movement of her eyes in his direction. She continues to stand with one arm hugged across her chest, her eyes blindly staring at the ramp.  
  
Teal’c reaches Daniel’s side then, and right on his heels is Dr. Fraiser. She stops by Daniel, the two of them sharing a moment of silent communication before Dr. Fraiser slowly walks up the ramp. Approaching Sam, she touches her on one arm, but there is not the tiniest flicker of response.   
  
George watches as Dr. Fraiser convinces her to lie on the gurney with ease, just another sign that something is terribly wrong. As she is rolled out of the room, George joins SG-1 and Bra’tac in the gate room.   
  
“Master Bra’tac,” George says by way of greeting, the other man bowing his head slightly.  
  
“Where did you find her?” Daniel asks, his voice a bit hoarse.  
  
“I did not,” Bra’tac replies. “She was discovered wandering near the _chappa'ai_ on Chulak. One of my pupils recognized her and brought me to her directly.”  
  
“She just appeared on Chulak?” Daniel asks. “Do you have any idea how she got there? Where she’s been all this time?”  
  
Bra’tac shakes his head. “You see how she is. She has not spoken a word. I am not even certain she recognized me. I just thought it best to return her home as soon as possible.”  
  
“And we are grateful for that,” George says. “Hopefully, given a little time, Major Carter will be able to tell us herself.”  
  
“That is my hope as well,” Bra’tac says with a small smile.  
  
“And Jack?” Daniel interjects, asking the question no one wants to verbalize.  
  
Bra’tac’s face becomes grave once more. “There has been no word.”  
  
Oppressive silence settles over the room.   
  
* * *  
  
Daniel sits in a dim corner of the infirmary watching the steady, competent motions of Janet’s hands as they run efficiently over Sam’s still form. The gestures are comforting. Familiar. Just like the smell of antiseptic and the feel of cool, rough concrete against his back. It’s assumed by many that Daniel hates the infirmary with single-minded focus, but the truth is, no matter how many horrible things have almost happened in these rooms, there is still something fundamentally reassuring about this place, the logic and organization of Janet’s infirmary.  
  
Today Daniel is taking comfort where he can, because Sam is still eerily silent, her eyes wide and staring. Alive, but not living.  
  
The last time he saw Sam was across a hazy field as she yelled at him to double-time it through the gate.   
  
_“Don’t argue with me, Daniel! Just go! We’re right behind you.”_  
  
Only they weren’t.   
  
Jack and Sam never made it home from that planet.  
  
Neither Daniel nor Teal’c managed to get a clear look at the Jaffa who ambushed them. The Tok’ra knew nothing, could only confirm that Sam and Jack were not the prisoners of any of the System Lords. How were they supposed to search when they had not the slightest clue where to start looking?  
  
It was as if they had both disappeared into the mist of that damn planet.  
  
Even now that Sam is back, it’s as if she is still shrouded in mist, not a single outward clue to help them understand where she has been, what she has endured.  
  
“You’re going to feel a small pinch here, Sam,” Janet says as she draws a blood sample. She’s been keeping up a steady stream of one-sided conversation as long as Daniel’s been here.  
  
As usual, Sam doesn’t answer, but she does flinch, looking down at her arm almost as in surprise.  
  
Daniel sits up, watching closely, feeling hope rise at this brief sign of life in her, but Sam just leans back against the bed, staring once more at the ceiling.  
  
“Sorry about that,” Janet murmurs.  
  
Daniel drops his head back against the hard wall.  
  
Teal’c and General Hammond join them after a while, Hammond dropping one hand to Daniel’s shoulder in an uncharacteristically paternal gesture. Hammond, he knows, is probably just as unsettled as the rest of them are.  
  
“How is she?” he asks.  
  
“About the same,” Daniel says. “She still hasn’t said anything.”  
  
Hammond lowers himself onto the bench next to Daniel, apparently settling in for the long haul. Glancing at the clock, Daniel knows they all should have gone home by now. No one is ridiculous enough to suggest it.  
  
When Janet finishes with Sam, she gestures for the men to follow her into her office.  
  
“Tell us what you can, Doctor,” Hammond says.  
  
“Well, best I can tell, she’s dehydrated, a bit malnourished, but nothing serious.”  
  
Daniel knows he should feel relieved, but he can’t quite let himself believe Sam has come away from what they suspect is eight weeks of captivity without a scratch.  
  
“She shows no physical signs of trauma,” Janet continues.   
  
“But if they used a sarcophagus…,” Daniel counters.  
  
Janet nods, weariness crossing her face. They all know that a sarcophagus can hide countless evils done to the human body. “At least she’s not showing any signs of withdrawal.”  
  
“Not yet,” Daniel tacks on before he can stop himself. He’s not sure why he’s insisting on the worst-case scenario. Hadn’t that always been Jack’s job?  
  
Janet concedes the point with another nod. “Her blood work will be able to tell us for certain.”  
  
“Is there any physical reason she cannot speak, Doctor?” Hammond asks.  
  
“None that I can see, sir,” she says with a shake of her head. Her voice sounds a bit rough around the edges as if she’s angry at her inability to find them answers.   
  
“Should we bring in Dr. MacKenzie?” Hammond says delicately as if to make the words less painful.  
  
Daniel hears it anyway. The general wants to know if Sam has lost her mind.   
  
Janet opens her mouth, her eyes darting to Daniel. “I think that’s probably a good idea, sir.”  
  
Daniel turns away, his eyes landing on silent, still Sam.  
  
Three days of silence later, the psychologists are plying them with complex terms about post-traumatic stress disorder and frozen states. Daniel thinks this is about way more than trauma. Sam has good reason to be silent, even if he doesn’t know what that is. People are worrying that she is perhaps brain-damaged or no longer able to function in the real world.  
  
Daniel knows differently.  
  
When Sam first came back, her eyes were blank and he knew she hadn’t really believed she was here, that she could be safe at the SGC once more. But time here has changed that for her. He knows she accepts this now, because even beyond her lack of words and the shield she has erected around herself, Daniel can see that she is thinking and processing.   
  
Hammond has been questioning Sam for nearly twenty minutes now with no response. She shows no interest in pen and paper and though Daniel knows she is listening, she has no intention of responding.  
  
The only outward reaction she lets slip through is the slight clenching of her fingers when Hammond asks her about Jack.  
  
Daniel doesn’t think anyone else even notices.  
  
“Sam,” Daniel says, breaking his long silence. “We need to know.”  
  
He can read her reluctance as she stares stubbornly at her sheets, her breathing unnaturally even.  
  
“Sam.”   
  
She understands what he is asking. He knows she does. _Is Jack alive? Can he be saved? Is there any hope?_  
  
Sam lifts her eyes to his for the first time since she returned, a long, electric moment of connection between them. He’s not ready for what he sees there: the flat, lifeless quality to eyes that had once been familiar.  
  
She looks haunted. Resigned. He’s not sure which is worse.  
  
Daniel knows then though, knows that only part of Sam has been returned to them.  
  
“Jack?” he asks again, his voice wanting to crack over the word as dread squeezes his chest.  
  
Very deliberately, Sam shakes her head, her eyes dropping away from his.  
  
Daniel's left to wonder if this hopelessness is what stole her voice.  
  
* * *  
  
Teal’c watches the interrogation of Major Carter from afar. Watches Daniel Jackson begin to realize that though she has been returned to them, she may never again be what she was.  
  
Teal’c is the only one to truly understand what she probably suffered during her captivity. He keeps such knowledge to himself. He assumes Major Carter’s silence must be necessary to her in some fundamental way. He will not betray that with speculation about a tale that is not his to tell.  
  
He recognizes it though, that expression he has witnessed on prisoners before. Prisoners broken by any and all means necessary.   
  
He sees it and understands what it means.  
  
When she is ready to be released from the infirmary there is brief discussion of transferring her to a facility that may more fully serve her ‘special’ needs, as if she is an uncomfortable reminder of their own vulnerabilities that needs to be hidden from sight. A reminder that only a small twist of fate separates them from her.  
  
Daniel Jackson objects. “You are not sticking her in some damn ward.”  
  
Dr. Fraiser agrees. “She’s not a danger to herself. She’s functioning. She just doesn’t interact. She’s much better off here, among people and things she knows and is comfortable with.”  
  
In the end, Major Carter is given a room on base next to Teal’c’s, an implicit agreement that he will keep an eye on her at night, be there in case she has need of anyone.  
  
She never spends a single night in her own room.  
  
Each evening she knocks on Teal’c’s door. She always takes an almost involuntary step back when he opens the door, her eyes darting past him to the room behind.  
  
“I would appreciate your company if you wish to come inside,” he says each time, stepping back to let her make the decision herself.   
  
Choice would have been the first thing her captors stole from her.  
  
After a moment or two of hesitation, she enters.  
  
She flinches a bit when the door closes, moving to the far wall and leaning back against it. When Teal’c retakes his seat on the floor, she also slides down the wall until her knees are drawn into her chest.  
  
She has never appeared smaller to him than these hours she spends huddled in the flickering candlelight of his quarters, looking as if the shadows might swallow her whole.  
  
She waits, her eyes intent on him and her body tense, until he begins to speak.  
  
He speaks of inconsequential things. He doesn’t need to interrogate her, doesn’t need to pry to know what she’s suffered. She survived it, is coping as well as she can. He can ask no more of her than that.   
  
He talks to her of the last eight weeks, any odd occurrences, conversations overheard in the commissary, or base anecdotes. He doesn’t know if she hears the words or is just listening to the cadence of his voice. Either way, he speaks until she finally sleeps, curled up on the hard concrete of his floor.  
  
Each night it is the same.  
  
During the day, Teal’c watches her closely. He notices the way she eats steadily and throws herself into physical rehabilitation with the fever of one possessed. He can see past her silence, knowing there is more they don’t understand about what she endured.  
  
She turns to him sometimes, awareness of his scrutiny in her eyes, wary that he might spill her secret. That he might interfere.  
  
“I will assist you,” he says, shifting to spot her as she lifts weights, or pacing and encouraging her on the treadmill.  
  
In these moments, she closes her eyes briefly, her fingers tentatively brushing his. It is the only physical contact he ever witnesses her make of her own volition. When the moment passes and she looks at him again, there is only the steely determination of a warrior with a mission.  
  
Teal’c understands this far too well.  
  
He does not know for certain what she is preparing for, what goal she has set for herself. It is enough that he suspects. He respects her right to it and will help her reach it.  
  
Three weeks later when Jacob Carter arrives, she surprises them all by letting him pull her into a hug.  
  
“I’d like to bring her back with me for a while, if she wants,” Jacob Carter says, disconcerted by the condition he finds her in.  
  
They protest, but Major Carter takes her father’s hand, waits until he looks at her and nods firmly once.  
  
And so it begins, Teal’c thinks.  
  
He has carried her as far as he can.  
  
* * *  
  
A small crowd gathers to see Sam off. Daniel watches her as she enters, people murmuring their farewells as she passes. She doesn’t pause or respond, walking straight to the base of the ramp where her father waits for her.  
  
Jacob takes the pack from Sam’s hand and begins to lead her up the ramp, but Sam resists, pulling back slightly, and he turns to her, concern creasing his face.   
  
Daniel wonders if she has changed her mind.  
  
But Sam merely crosses over to Daniel and stands less than a foot in front of him. As he’s come to expect, she doesn’t say anything, but she does take his face between her two hands, the flesh of her palms cool against his cheeks. Her eyes say everything they need to and Daniel knows without her saying that this is a goodbye. Woven into the love and gratitude is the knowledge that she doesn’t plan to return.  
  
“Sam,” Daniel sighs, batting down the urge to grab her and keep her here.  
  
Her face crumples momentarily and she leans in, her forehead resting against his for a fleeting last moment of contact.  
  
She releases him, turning to Teal’c and grabbing the man’s upper arms. He pulls her into a full hug. Sam tenses at first before melting into his arms.   
  
“May you find that which you seek,” Daniel can hear Teal’c say in an undertone.  
  
She nods against his chest, her fingers clenching on his arms.  
  
Then, as if she flips a switch somewhere, her expression wipes clean and she steps away from him.  
  
She backs up the ramp, taking the time to look around the room at all the people who have gathered to see her off. At the horizon, she hesitates, turning to Hammond and saluting one last time.  
  
She steps through.  
  
Only three days pass before Jacob returns to the SGC.  
  
“She’s gone,” he says, looking a little lost.  
  
Teal’c isn’t surprised and Daniel wonders if this is what his parting words meant.  
  
The three men share a look, all of them conscious of the same simple fact.  
  
She won’t be found. Not unless she wants to be.  
  
And just like that, Sam Carter disappears out into the universe again.


	3. All Fall Down

Two days after Sam disappears for the second time, Hammond orders her lab packed up. That’s when Daniel forces himself to go in there one last time. Driven by the thought of near strangers digging through her things, he gathers together her personal items himself, packing them away into a box. 

He’ll hold on to them until she wants them again.

Sliding open the bottom drawer on her desk, he finds only one item sitting pristinely in the center. It’s a letter of resignation, neatly typed and signed.

The ordered words and calm rationalizations on the form should be comforting. It’s proof that there is enough of Sam left that she felt the need to properly resign, to leave things neat and clean behind her. But all Daniel sees is the permanence of it, how carefully she severed all ties before she left.

She’s really not coming back.

The days leech into weeks, a full month passing with no news, no sign. Sam’s lab is empty now. It won’t be long until Hammond is forced to reassign the space, fill it with the work of someone new. The SGC is moving on, firmly relegating Sam and Jack to the past.

But Daniel is still here, sitting in the empty darkness of Sam’s abandoned space, trying to reconcile himself to a truth he can’t quite accept.

It’s just a room, he tries to remind himself.

“Daniel Jackson.”

Daniel doesn’t look up from the desk at the sound of Teal’c’s voice. “I don’t understand why she couldn’t stay.”

And maybe that is the crux of his impasse. Unlike Jack, Sam had the option to stay, to still be here with them. Her departure was completely of her own choosing.

“She has done what she believed necessary,” Teal’c says. “As her friends, we must accept that.”

“And move on?” Daniel asks bitterly.

“We too will do what we must,” Teal’c says, as always, playing the stoic warrior. Just as Jack and Sam would want him to.

Daniel can’t hate him for that.

“Bra’tac has asked to see us. We must prepare to depart.”

Reluctantly, Daniel pushes to his feet, following Teal’c out into the hall. In the doorway, he pauses, looking back into the empty space, doing what he must.

He pulls the door shut.

It still feels wrong, stepping through the gate with only Teal’c by his side. Daniel knows there is a stack of personnel files on Hammond’s desk as he searches for replacements. SG-1 won’t be left skeletal much longer. 

There’s no more room on the premiere unit for ghosts.

Bra’tac is there to greet them when they step through to Chulak. 

“You have brought the items I requested?” he asks of Teal’c.

“Yes,” Teal’c says, pulling a file out of his vest.

Daniel peers at it, confused, his heart climbing into his throat when Bra’tac flips it open to reveal a photograph of Jack.

“What’s going on?” Daniel demands, curiosity about this visit belatedly flaring into life.

Bra’tac and Teal’c share a look Daniel can’t quite interpret, but it grinds against his skin, putting him on edge.

“We have captured a Jaffa believed to be a spy,” Bra’tac explains, his words careful, almost practiced. “He was caught stealing supplies from a rebel camp on Rhodos. His name is Jatal, and he was once First Prime to a minor Goa’uld called Anhur.”

Daniel nods along, automatically filing the information away, but still unclear as to its significance. “What does this have to do with Jack?”

Teal’c and Bra’tac share yet another look, and Daniel realizes that they somehow fear his reaction to this information.

“Under interrogation,” Bra’tac continues, “he boasted of his master’s accomplishments, including his capture of the fabled Tau’ri warriors.”

Teal’c looks displeased by such tasteless boasting, but all Daniel can latch onto are the implications for Jack and Sam. “Are you saying this Anhur is the Goa’uld who captured Jack and Sam?”

“This is what we endeavor to discover,” Teal’c says.

Bra’tac gestures for them to start down the path toward the training camps, falling into step next to them. “I have had Jatal brought here. We will question him ourselves.”

Daniel’s brain is running on overdrive as they walk, wading through all the possibilities this new discovery reveals. By the time they finally reach the tents, he has it fairly well crystallized in his mind. 

“Teal’c,” he says, grabbing his arm before they enter. “Let me do the questioning.”

Daniel has always been able to get people to talk about anything, knows he can use his lowly human status as a way to goad the Jaffa into revealing too much, if his boasting is any sign of his arrogance. He can do this. Even more, he needs to do this.

Daniel gets the feeling that Teal’c is somehow pleased with the request. He nods, handing Daniel the file. “As you wish.”

Daniel looks down to see a picture of Sam in the folder as well. It’s finally time for answers, for the story that has been eluding them for so long.

Following Bra’tac into a tent, Daniel gets his first look at the captured Jaffa. Jatal can only be described as scruffy. His hair is long and wild, face covered with a partially grown beard, armor patched and dull. 

Daniel isn’t sure he’s ever seen a Jaffa quite this unkempt before, not even in the heat of battle. He doesn’t so much look like a spy as a hermit, someone living on barest levels of subsistence to judge by the gauntness of his features. Only the bright glint of his gold tattoo speaks to the high position he must have once held.

“We wish to know if you have ever seen this woman,” Daniel says, holding out the photo of Sam.

Jatal seems surprised that Daniel is questioning him rather than one of the Jaffa, his eyes glittering dangerously. “I will not be addressed by this human.”

“You speak as if you have a great many choices in front of you, Jaffa,” Bra’tac says, his voice calm despite the unspoken threat underlying it. 

When Jatal swallows his rage and drops his eyes to the floor, Daniel realizes that Bra’tac has likely said or done something to ensure the Jaffa’s cooperation. At this point, Daniel doesn’t really care as long as he will speak.

“The woman,” Daniel repeats.

Jatal’s eyes lift, looking at the photo. “Yes,” he says. “She was a prisoner of my master.”

“Anhur,” Daniel says in confirmation.

Jatal seems to take umbrage that a mere human would dare speak his god’s name, but nods nonetheless, the gesture stiff, angry.

“Was,” Daniel repeats, purposively layering the word with the slightest edge of a sneer. “She escaped, didn’t she?”

The Jaffa scoffs. “She did not escape. I _made_ her go through the _chappa’ai._ ”

“Are you trying to say that you…rescued her?”

Jatal’s eyes widen as if Daniel has just accused him of being a _shol’va_. “I did not,” he says, his voice tight. “I merely sent her away. Her welfare was not of my concern.”

Daniel’s eyes dart to Teal’c. He hadn’t expected to hear this.

“Did Anhur order you to do this?” Teal’c asks, taking a step closer.

Jatal shifts with what Daniel would call embarrassment if he hadn’t been a Jaffa. “No,” he admits. “He did not.”

“Then why did you do it?” Teal’c presses. “You must have known it would mean banishment.”

“I did it in service of my god,” he snarls. “His obsession with her was destroying him. He lost _two_ planets in the time he was with her, nearly half his territory! She would have been the end of him.”

“You could have just killed her,” Daniel observes with more calm than he feels, because something here still doesn’t feel quite right. “But instead, you delivered her to the home of the resistance.”

The Jaffa growls, but eventually drops Daniels’s gaze. “She showed an admirable amount of courage,” he admits with grudging respect. “I do not believe I heard her beg once, even with everything that was done to her.”

It’s the first confirmation of what Sam endured during her absence. Daniel feels bile rising on the back of his tongue.

“She was tortured?” Bra’tac asks.

“Quite extensively,” Jatal confirms.

Daniel walks a few paces away under the guise of pulling his canteen out of his pack. He takes a long drink, trying to disguise how unsettled he is. It’s nearly impossible to listen to such a cavalier description of what Sam endured, especially from someone who had just stood by and watched it happen, or worse, participated.

Bra’tac clears his throat. “And were there any other prisoners? Someone who perhaps came in with Major Carter?”

“Just the _ha'shak_ ,” Jatal says with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“This man?” Teal’c asks, passing him a photo of Jack.

“That was him,” he confirms with a nod, his eyes sliding off the photo as if reluctant to look upon it. It’s a strange reaction to something he seemed so blasé about only moments before.

Daniel doesn’t miss Jatal’s use of the past tense.

Bra’tac reaches out, grabbing the Jaffa’s shoulder. “What became of him?” he demands.

The Jaffa is confused by their interest in something he obviously finds trivial. “He was… _terac shri_.”

The words ripple through the tent, neither Bra’tac nor Teal’c quite able to hide their reactions.

“Oblivion,” Daniel automatically translates, staring keenly at Teal’c. He isn’t clear on the significance of the term. He turns to Bra’tac, who is visibly shaken. “What does that mean? That Jack is…dead?”

“No,” Bra’tac says, not taking his eyes from Anhur’s Jaffa. His tone implies that whatever _terac shri_ means, it is much worse than death.

Teal’c turns, walking until he is staring out the opening of the tent, like he can’t speak the words while looking at them. “ _Terac shri_ refers to the destruction of a host’s soul in the moment of blending.”

There’s a faint buzzing in Daniel’s ears as he stares at Teal’c’s back, trying to reconcile the words.

“Are you saying that Jack is…?” Daniel trails off, not quite able to speak the words.

Teal’c turns to look at him. “O’Neill _is_ Anhur.”

Blindly, Daniel gropes for the nearest chair, lowering himself into it. He glances at Bra’tac, hoping for disagreement perhaps, but the Jaffa Master only nods in confirmation.

“It is a great gift,” Jatal remarks, but Daniel doesn’t have any room to spare his misguided words a thought.

“For such a minor Goa’uld, taking one of the hated Tau’ri rebels as host would have been too much to resist,” Bra’tac surmises in a strangely detached voice. “Used wisely, he could exploit it to great advantage with the System Lords, perhaps increase his influence and power.”

The idea of Jack O’Neill’s knowledge and abilities in the hands of a Goa’uld, minor or not, is grim as hell.

That’s when it finally all slams together in Daniel’s mind, the understanding shuddering into place. Whatever Sam suffered, she would have suffered at the hands of Jack.

Daniel’s eyes latch onto Teal’c, a beat of understanding between them. 

At least now they have a pretty good idea where Sam went.


	4. Eight Weeks

Sam lies on her bed, or rather the padded shelf that passes for a bed on Tok’ra bases. She reaches for sleep she knows won’t come, too much suppressed energy vibrating through her body to relax.  
  
On the floor, her pack sits ready, full of supplies smuggled from the SGC and information pilfered from the Tok’ra, a race so trusting or so arrogant that they don’t even have doors. She tries to feel guilty for taking advantage of them, but it’s been so long since she’s felt anything that she can’t quite conjure the emotion.  
  
They don’t matter. The Tok’ra, like everything else, are simply a means to an end.  
  
A fact only compounded by their treatment of her since her arrival with her father a few days before. It’s obvious she makes them nervous, that most of the Tok’ra don’t know what to say or how to act around her. She’s not sure if that is because she was so recently captive to a Goa’uld and saw up close what genetic potential the Tok’ra drag around, or if it’s just her silence.  
  
With no symbiote, Sam is alone in her mind. So how can she possibly survive without communication? For the Tok’ra, that sort of silence is a nightmare.  
  
They view her as incomplete, and they’re right. Just not in the way they think.  
  
She’s been nothing but a body since long before she lost her words.  
  
* * *  
  
 _Sam’s been in the cell for nearly a day without seeing any of the rest of SG-1. She doesn’t know if they managed to make it back to the gate or not, but her solitary cell is a good indication that they have eluded the other Jaffa. It is enough of a sign to give her hope.  
  
For the most part, she has been left alone. Other than one unprovoked kick to the ribs, she is uninjured. Their disinterest works to her advantage. Maybe they won’t realize she is worth torturing.  
  
It is hours until she hears noises in the distance. Someone is approaching her cell. Having already searched the chamber, she knows there is nothing to be used as a weapon, but she still places herself behind the door where she can take a swing at whoever enters.  
  
The door creaks opens, and, just as Sam is about to attack, she recognizes a familiar voice whispering urgently.  
  
“Carter?”  
  
Sam drops her arms and steps out from behind the door. “Sir!”  
  
“You okay?” the Colonel asks, his eyes running over her, looking for evidence of injury.   
  
Sam smiles and takes a step closer to him, eager to get the hell out of here. He reaches a hand out to her, but her smile falters when her brain finally registers something it shouldn’t be feeling.  
  
The sickening crawling sensation at the base of her skull that is the inheritance of Jolinar’s violation makes her knees go weak.   
  
“No,” she says, shaking her head as she stumbles backwards, out of reach of that achingly familiar hand.  
  
“What,” her visitor says, the voice changing and eyes flashing for effect, “aren’t you happy to see me?”  
  
“Colonel…,” she whispers. Her back is flat against the hard wall and, for once, there are no last minute plans running through her brain. No miraculous ideas for escape.   
  
Everything is frozen.  
  
* * *  
  
The First Prime comes for her, transferring her to a mothership in orbit of the planet. Sitting in her cell, she feels the ship surge into hyperspace, knows that the chances of rescue have been seriously dented.  
  
She finds she misses the stark stone walls and solid wooden door of her previous prison. Here, in this golden cage, she feels as if on display, invisible shields keeping her locked in, but without blocking anyone’s view of her.  
  
He, the *Goa’uld* as she keeps reminding herself in a silent mantra of horror, comes down to her cell a few times that first day. He rarely says anything, most often just staring at her.  
  
She chooses to look at the floor, unable to bear the foreign posture of his body, the calculated hardness of his eyes chilling her to the bone.  
  
On the second day, he enters her cell. All thoughts of overpowering him and escaping are short-lived. The Jaffa firmly bind her hands behind her back, and there are no less than six of them standing watch right outside. She reminds herself that she can’t bank on this Goa’uld underestimating her.  
  
He knows her as well as the Colonel does now.  
  
Sam breathes slowly, trying not to think of it as she bites down hard on the inside of her cheek.  
  
“You worry about her,” the Goa’uld says. It takes Sam a moment to realize he’s not actually talking to her, but about her.  
  
She fights against the bile rising in her throat as his finger reaches out to slide under her chin.  
  
“She is very beautiful.”  
  
Sam jerks away from the touch, but he grabs her face, forcing her back.  
  
“He doubts you are strong enough to survive captivity,” he says, at last deciding to include her in the bizarre conversation that she can only assume is meant to terrorize her, to soften her up for interrogation.   
  
There might have been a time, back in the very beginning, that those words could have impacted her, raised doubts. But now after four years as teammates, it’s just laughable.  
  
She rolls her eyes, choosing to cling to flippancy rather than horror. “You’re not very good at this, are you?” she goads before she can think better of it.  
  
That’s when he hits her, his face contorting in anger. Stars explode in her vision, the metallic taste of blood seeping into her tongue.  
  
She bites back a curse, breathing hard through the resulting wooziness.   
  
By the time she manages to sit back up, her jaw aching, she’s contrite. Not for back-talking to the damn Goa’uld, but for being so careless.   
  
For making the Colonel hit her.   
  
She straightens, her eyes lowered, her posture no longer confrontational. She has every intention of behaving, needs the snake to see that.  
  
He either misses it, or just doesn’t give a damn, leaning forward to wrap his hands around her throat. His rage seems disproportionate to her simple verbal quip and not for the first time, she feels like she’s missing something.  
  
His thumbs press down against her windpipe, closing off her access to precious oxygen.  
  
She struggles against the pressure, lashing out at him with her feet as best she can, but getting nowhere with her hands bound and his weight against her. Her vision begins to blur around the edges, her body slowing.  
  
She wants to tell the Colonel this isn’t his fault. That she knows there is nothing he can do. To tell him she’s sorry. All she can do is stare back though, because the Goa’uld’s stolen all her air.  
  
It’s strange, the thing she thinks of as he kills her.  
  
Their last mission, Jack’s hand in her hair, trailing down her neck and pulling free with a leaf he waves rather triumphantly in her face with a grin. She can almost smell the crisp autumn air of that distant planet, feel the warmth of that sun.  
  
But then everything dims, taking the memory with it, blackness creeping into its place.   
  
At least the Goa’uld isn’t drawing it out, she thinks.   
  
It’s only when she wakes in the blinding light of the sarcophagus that she realizes just how foolish that last thought had been.  
  
* * *  
  
Her death is a daily activity.  
  
It takes her a while, but Sam eventually realizes the Goa’uld isn’t interrogating her. When, day after day, the monster wearing the Colonel’s face calmly breaks her left arm in the same place and methodically splits her lip before continuing to beat into her body with his fists, she thinks it strange.   
  
The Goa’uld don’t normally go for such mundane pursuits as beating a prisoner. She sees how his knuckles split with the effort, but the beast doesn’t seem to mind.   
  
During the haze of her sessions when her mind begins to pull back from her flesh and the agony that lances through it, she wonders where the pain sticks are. What happened to hand devices? Doesn’t he have Jaffa to do his dirty work for him?  
  
No, this insignificant Goa’uld is not nearly as savvy. He simply comes to her day after day, releasing a seemingly deep-seated hatred into her body. Sam almost manages to find a strange sort of comfort in its regularity. At least she always knows what to expect. First the arm, then the face. Each done calmly, methodically. Then he steps back, as if waiting. Sam is never sure what he expects in these moments, but she’s not even remotely tempted to fill the awkward silence with information or begging.  
  
Though he never asks her a question, he eventually grows angry and tears into her body once more. Sam doesn’t scream, never lets more than a heavy grunt pass her lips. She refuses to add to the Colonel’s suffering. Beyond everything, she is always aware, always knowing that he is here, too. She stays passive, taking what she is given, never making it worse by struggling or tossing out insults as he might have done. Her expression never changes. It is frozen in the one she knows he can read wherever he may be. The one that says she will survive this, no matter what.  
  
One morning, after waking in the sarcophagus that is becoming frighteningly familiar, Sam’s brain begins to register the purpose of her daily sessions with the Goa’uld. She had thought the Goa’uld was either very incompetent at gathering information from prisoners, or he was just playing with her for fun.  
  
The day after her fifth death, Sam finally realizes what the routine is really about. The Goa’uld isn’t trying to break her.  
  
He’s trying to break the Colonel.  
  
* * *  
  
She’s slipping.  
  
She stops counting deaths after an even dozen. The numbers just don’t interest her anymore.  
  
Each time she comes out of the sarcophagus, she feels smaller, less concrete, like pieces of her are flaking away with every hit. It’s terribly hard to be too concerned though, not when hours can flit by as she stares unfocused at her cell wall, the buzz of the sarcophagus sliding across her skin, wiping everything else away.  
  
Jolinar’s voice still occasionally intrudes when she least expects it.  
  
‘We don’t use the sarcophagus,’ she hisses.  
  
That might mean something if Sam had anything resembling a choice.  
  
She idly wonders exactly how much of her soul she has to lose before the pain will fail to reach her. How long until she ceases to be anything but a body?  
  
She’s beginning to forget why she is supposed to hold on in the first place.  
  
He’s always there to remind her.  
  
* * *  
  
When it comes down to it, Sam Carter realizes she is capable of a great many things.   
  
She can, with conscious effort, divorce the hard, icy brown eyes from ones that had once sparkled warmly with wit and affection.  
  
She can imagine that the long, calloused fingers that leave bruises on her flesh are unfamiliar and that she has not, in fact, ever yearned to feel them skim gently over her skin.  
  
She can even pretend that he is dead, rather than brutally possessed, that this is a dream, a residual nightmare, or another reality slightly askew.   
  
Yes. Sam Carter is capable of a great many things.   
  
Never more so than the day they finally, *finally* underestimate her. The Goa’uld’s back is to her, his attention already somewhere else as she finishes dying, his lotar carefully washing his hands of her blood. He leaves it to his Jaffa to retrieve Sam and carry her to the sarcophagus.   
  
Their familiarity with the routine makes them sloppy, and somehow Sam is not yet so far gone not to notice it, some dormant part of her brain resurrecting to scream orders at her.   
  
The Jaffa is foolish enough not to check that she is completely dead before releasing her from her restraints. It’s a small thing, a tiny glitch born of arrogance, but for Sam, it is enough. With strength even she marvels at, she manages to shove out of his careless grasp and fill her shaking fingers with the cool steel of his knife.  
  
It takes two steps and every single capability she still has left to cross the distance to the Goa’uld, but somehow she makes it.   
  
As she lifts the blade his throat though, she learns something else about herself. Something she’ll find hard ever to forgive.  
  
Standing there, his life in her hands, she finds she cannot ruthlessly dig the knife into his flesh, piercing both delicate spines with one slice. It’s the one ability that escapes her.  
  
She can’t kill him.  
  
In that moment, he is not the monster that has been torturing her for weeks, he is simply the friend she has known for four years, and even more, the man she...   
  
Oh, God.  
  
She meets his eyes and freezes. She imagines the Colonel in there somewhere, ordering, demanding her to do it. But this one moment of hesitation, her unwillingness, is enough for the fumbling Jaffa to regain his composure.   
  
As rough hands disarm her and slam her back into the wall to bind her once more, she forces herself to meet the Goa’uld’s gaze, knowing that somewhere, deep inside, he is watching.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she whispers through chapped lips and a broken jaw, knowing she has failed him.   
  
There is no response from Jack O’Neill other than golden, flashing eyes. As he presses the blade she had stolen against her throat, she can only think that her weakness has damned them both. She can feel it physically, another large part of her soul ripping away, dripping out onto the hard floor of her cell.  
  
Her blood begins to run freely down her neck and over her chest and her only thought is for Jack.  
  
Could he ever forgive her this?  
  
* * *  
  
The day after she fails to kill Jack, the pattern that is her one source of comfort changes. She wakes in the sarcophagus as always, but, after being dropped back in her cell, she is left alone. For days.  
  
For a while it seems like a new sort of psychological torture. And it’s working. Sam jumps at every sound, never knowing what’s coming next. Is he finished with her? Is he going to kill her now? Or has something happened?   
  
She paces the cell aimlessly, dimly aware that part of her seems to miss the routine of torture.  
  
By the middle of the third day, she develops a fever. Her body aches and even lying in complete stillness on the ground makes her feel like she has broken every bone in her body. Sweat pools in the hollows of her flesh and her shaking hands cannot be stilled, even for a moment.  
  
Some small part of her brain registers that the Goa’uld has put her in the sarcophagus every day for weeks and weeks only to cut her off entirely.   
  
Withdrawal.  
  
Her body is falling apart.  
  
She vaguely remembers him visiting her. Just standing in the doorway, watching her as she lay shivering, curled up on the hard floor. She is sure she begged him to stop the agony. Even she is not incoherent enough not to recognize the irony.  
  
Six days with no sarcophagus and she begins to hallucinate. Dark forms swirl around her, whispering just out of reach. Calling her a coward. Begging for death with his voice and cursing her when she fails to act.  
  
‘You did this. You did this.’  
  
She hopes she will die. Because then maybe he will put her back in the sarcophagus.  
  
And if not, at least it will be over.  
  
* * *  
  
The first time, she fights.  
  
She screams and yells and kicks every available part of her attacker. The Goa’uld can’t do this to them. Not this. But even if she isn’t just recovering from withdrawal, he has superhuman strength. He’s forced to knock her nearly unconscious, but he manages to implement his new torture technique.  
  
It isn’t until the sixth time that she finally stops fighting.  
  
She used to calculate passing time by the sarcophagus, but he is careful now never to damage her more than necessary.  
  
Her only constant becomes the feel of his hands on her skin, trying to make her respond just to prove that he owns her in more ways than one.  
  
She simply looks away and tries to remember the numbers that used to mean so much to her.   
  
She can’t.  
  
* * *  
  
Somewhere along the line, the beast starts speaking to her in *his* voice. It’s worse than the desecration of her body, hearing him whisper her name as he runs his fingers over her flesh in a mockery of true affection.  
  
She nearly bites clean through her tongue to keep from screaming for Jack to stop him.  
  
She whispers his name once, in a moment of weakness.  
  
And then she stops talking all together.  
  
* * *  
  
One day the beast demands to hear her speak again. He wants her to say his host’s name.  
  
Sam wonders if the snake has somehow lost himself in this horrible dance as well.  
  
She will give him nothing more, won’t let go of this one last thing she still has claim to. He can’t have her words.  
  
He’s already taken everything else.  
  
In the end, she knows her body will survive anything he doles out. Her greatest torture is the knowledge that they are only here because of her, because of her weakness. So she can handle his hands on her body or his fists breaking her bones.  
  
Part of her welcomes it as the punishment she deserves.  
  
But she will not speak.  
  
The beast loses his temper and, for the first time in weeks, beats her to death with his fists.  
  
At least it’s familiar.  
  
* * *   
  
The renewed buzz of the sarcophagus has barely begun to abandon her skin when she wakes to the groaning protest of the ship shuddering around her. She listens to each impact, the thunder of feet in the corridor, and waits for that one perfect shot.  
  
The battle lasts less than twenty minutes before she feels the surge of the damaged ship limping into hyperspace.   
  
Another missed opportunity.  
  
* * *  
  
After the battle, she is left alone for days on end. She knows it can’t last.  
  
Sure enough, the First Prime eventually appears to once again lead her to a session with the beast. Only this time he turns down a different corridor, wrenching her arm when she lags behind in confusion.   
  
“Move,” he demands, shoving her from behind.  
  
She walks dutifully, not bothering to wonder what new game the Goa’uld may have devised. She doubts it can be any worse.  
  
It’s not until the whine of the rings whip up to surround them that she realizes they are leaving the ship.  
  
And then she is outside, breathing fresh air with the insistent press of a staff weapon against her spine. She moves forward, the tall grass brushing the tips of her fingers as she crosses the open meadow, her eyes focusing on the silver glint of a Stargate in the distance.  
  
She stands quietly to the side as he dials, for once feeling absolutely nothing as the wormhole flushes into life. No awe, no excitement, no fear.   
  
There’s nothing left.  
  
“Go,” he demands, gesturing toward the event horizon.  
  
She doesn’t know if the Jaffa understands things like irises and IDCs, but neither had she bothered to look at the DHD as he dialed to see what fate he might be sending her to.   
  
It’s not clear if this is amnesty or execution.  
  
Is there a difference?  
  
She steps into the wormhole without hesitation, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she might not rematerialize on the other side. Ending up nothing more than residue on the back of Earth’s iris would be a sort of salvation in itself.  
  
When the tall stones of Chulak materialize around her, she nearly weeps with disappointment._  
  
* * *  
  
On the planet’s surface, pack heavy against her shoulders, Sam turns her back on the Tok’ra base and the woman she’d been a lifetime ago.  
  
She scrambles up a steep incline, the sand leeching away under her feet. She feels the renewed strength of her thighs as they work against unstable footing, feels the steady breath of a body prepared for exertion.  
  
She’s ready.  
  
One last mission.  
  
Against the inky sky, the Stargate stands bathed in moonlight. She passes the lone sentry without comment. She’s a ghost now because she’s invisible or the sentry just doesn’t care enough to ask. Either way, she’s insubstantial.  
  
Dialing the address with deliberate care, she watches the glyphs flash in the bright moonlight of the desert.  
  
She knows her father still sleeps in the caverns below her feet. She doesn’t have the words to explain to him what must be done. To explain that every time she closes her eyes, she sees his face, hears the words he couldn’t say.   
_  
‘You did this. You did this.’_  
  
They made her leave him there alone.   
  
No one understands. She never wanted to be rescued in the first place.  
  
There’s nothing left to rescue.


	5. World on Fire

Jacob shifts in his seat, rolling his shoulders to relieve the stiffness there.  
  
‘You know I could-,’ Selmak starts for at least the twentieth time.  
  
‘No,’ is Jacob’s just as predictable response.  
  
Selmak sighs but leaves Jacob to his discomfort. He’s been sitting in this chair for more than six hours straight now, making minor and superfluous corrections to their heading. His ass is numb and his neck is protesting in at least six languages, but he refuses to let Selmak fix that.  
  
He wants to be miserable, thank you very much.  
  
He doesn’t need Selmak to tell him how illogical that is, either.  
  
It’s been three days since Daniel and Teal’c showed up to tell him what they learned from the Jaffa Jatal.   
  
Imagining what Sam suffered had been bad enough even before he knew Jack’s place in this whole disaster. But at least her disappearance made a hell of a lot more sense now.  
  
While Jatal could not be convinced to give up any of his master’s secrets, such as the location of his planets or common flight paths for his ships, the Tok’ra did have some small amount of information on Anhur. Which, as Daniel theorized, is probably how Sam knew where to go as well. And why she had seemed so intent on coming back with Jacob in the first place.  
  
He still thinks he should have seen that coming.  
  
‘And if you somehow had, do you really believe you could have stopped her?’ Selmak asks.  
  
God, he really misses being able to brood in peace.  
  
Next to them, Daniel drops into the open seat, a food bar in one hand and a worn file in the other. The few slips of paper within represent the minimal information the Tok’ra keep on Anhur. Hell, Selmak’s first reaction to learning that Anhur had been the one to hold Sam and Jack prisoners had been, ‘Anhur is still alive?’   
  
That’s how well known this particular Goa’uld is. No one has heard anything about him or bothered to even check up on him in at least a decade. Not since long before Ra’s death.  
  
Daniel flips the much-reviewed file shut with a snap. “Is there anything else you can tell me about Anhur?” he asks.  
  
‘All yours,’ Jacob says, knowing Selmak’s been dying for company other than his for hours now. He doesn’t really blame her.  
  
“Not a great deal,” Selmak says, turning to look at Daniel. “Just that he is a minor Goa’uld descended from one of Ra’s inferior breeding lines.”  
  
Daniel leans forward, his forehead creasing above the frame of his glasses. “Breeding lines?”  
  
Jacob’s always thought that’s a particularly bizarre turn of phrase himself. Like they’re referring to themselves as purebred poodles or something.  
  
And just because he’s still annoyed and Selmak is trying to be so damn serious in front of Daniel, Jacob dredges up an image of his batty great-aunt Edie’s pink monster of a dog. Turnabout is fair play.  
  
Selmak snorts internally but refuses to be derailed. “Yes,” she says to Daniel. “The production of symbiotes among the Goa’uld is quite complicated and is strictly regulated. Never more so than since Egeria.”  
  
There’s an understatement, Jacob thinks. Egeria proved that the Goa’uld were not infallible. Subversion from within.  
  
“I can only imagine,” Daniel says. “But how exactly do they regulate reproduction?”  
  
“Symbiotes are bred with their specific purpose in mind, whether they are meant to serve merely as _prim’tah_ or if they are destined to one day be rewarded with a host. While Jaffa and their _prim’tah_ are the Goa’uld’s base of power, the reigning System Lords are still careful not to flood the galaxy with an excess of symbiotes capable of one day becoming rivals, not wishing for the increased territorial competition.”  
  
“So symbiotes created merely for the purpose of sustaining Jaffa are somehow…inferior?”  
  
Selmak nods. “A Queen is capable of manipulating how much information and memory is passed onto her offspring. As you recall, Egeria herself was able to produce symbiotes that were little more than empty husks.”   
  
“It must be a fine line between ensuring the survival of their race, and limiting growth.”  
  
“Many Goa’uld find it necessary to have underlings to help maintain their borders. Ra was particularly careful about which Queens his lines descended from. Many of the more powerful Goa’uld System Lords were born of Ra’s mate Selkhet, but for many centuries he was also in league with Tefnut, a Queen of little power or significance. It was with Tefnut that he created a line of purposely inferior, and therefore less threatening, descendents.”  
  
“Good followers, but not leaders in their own right?” Daniel guesses.  
  
“Yes. Anhur and others of his line were little more than vassals to Ra. Any power or significance they had came from him.”  
  
“So when Ra died,” Daniel says, “they became even less significant.”  
  
“Yes. It is probably why we heard nothing of Anhur’s capture of SG-1. He has never been important enough to merit being spied upon. He has been lucky enough to survive the chaos that descended after Ra’s death but still holds onto only a handful of planets out in the far edges of space.”  
  
“But when he took Jack as his host…”  
  
Selmak shakes her head. “I doubt even O’Neill’s knowledge can salvage what is inherently a genetic ineptitude, though Anhur undoubtedly saw it as an opportunity to curry favor with a new Lord, perhaps in exchange for greater protection from his neighbors.”  
  
“But you would have heard about it if he had, right?”  
  
“That is correct.”  
  
Daniel leans back in his seat, peering thoughtfully out into space for a while. “Jatal did let slip that Anhur has recently suffered great losses.”  
  
Jacob reemerges. “Maybe he’s so busy getting his ass kicked, he hasn’t had the chance to contact the System Lords.”  
  
“But you _do_ think this is where Sam’s gone, right?”  
  
“Yeah, I think so,” Jacob says, rubbing wearily at his neck. “You guys have always been big on not leaving anyone behind, right?”  
  
“Right,” Daniel agrees.  
  
While it will take them over a week to arrive at the first of Anhur’s known planets, they have to assume Sam took the shorter, much more reckless path of dialing directly. No one seems to want to speak the obvious truth, but Jacob knows without being told. Sam has proven she is no longer thinking straight and, even worse, that she feels she has very little left to lose.   
  
It scares the hell out of him.  
  
As does the fact that there is very little chance they will reach her in time.  
  
So Jacob shifts in his seat again, feeling a particularly nasty twinge in his back, and minutely fixes their flight path.  
  
It’s all he can do.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s not until the third planet that they hit pay dirt.   
  
“Hey guys,” Jacob calls out. “Get up here.”  
  
They spent four days scouting the first system Anhur had been known to control at some point, slipping into the region under cloak and monitoring communications between the surprisingly frequent ships. None of them belonged to Anhur though, and it seemed quite obvious that Olokun now ruled the system, having recently expanded outward from his neighboring territory. They have to assume the two planets there were the two Jatal mentioned.  
  
It took another few days to reach the second, even more isolated system. Here it seems that Jacob doesn’t even need to bother with the cloak. They have yet to see a single ship, or find any trace of habitation.  
  
It’s only when Jacob orbits the fourth planet that he finally picks up signs of civilization, meager as they are.  
  
“What have you discovered?” Teal’c asks as he and Daniel appear behind him.  
  
“This planet is definitely inhabited,” Jacob says, beginning another scan of the surface. “There’s a Stargate, and a few scattered pockets of civilization radiating outward from it.”  
  
“Wait,” Daniel says, pointing to the screen. “What is that? On the mountain?”  
  
“I’m not sure,” Jacob says, maneuvering the ship into a lower orbit now that he’s fairly convinced there are no other ships in the area.  
  
The clouds pull back slowly, revealing a lush jungle and the dominating mountain that overlooks the entire region.  
  
“Jesus,” Jacob breathes when he gets his first clear view.  
  
“Is that…?” Daniel asks.  
  
It’s a mother ship, or at least it had been at one point. Now it is little more than a broken shell, vast regions of the hull ripped clean away, interior chambers exposed to the sky.  
  
“This damage is fairly recent,” Teal’c observes, slipping into the seat next to Jacob.  
  
“How recent?” Daniel asks.  
  
“Less than three weeks.”  
  
They’re too late. Much too late.  
  
Jacob isn’t really sure what he expected Sam to have done, hadn’t allowed himself to think of things so concretely, but this… God, what has she done? How far has she gone?  
  
“There is a small village less than ten kilometers from the ship,” Teal’c notes.  
  
“We should see if any of the villagers are willing to talk to us.”  
  
Either Daniel doesn’t quite get what this destruction might mean, or he’s doing a better job of clinging to unfounded hope than Jacob is.  
  
He knows what this looks like: a suicide mission.  
  
Jesus.  
  
“Jacob Carter?”  
  
He doesn’t respond, just lets Selmak take over, guiding the ship smoothly toward the village. Lets her walk the distance for them, answer Daniel’s questions and deal with Teal’c’s knowing glances.  
  
The villagers speak some variant of a language Jacob doesn’t know and doesn’t bother to figure out. He just stands by Daniel’s side as he quietly translates what the village elder says.  
  
“They believed her to be a pilgrim come from a distant village for the seasonal offerings. She was there two weeks before the great ship came. She went into the temple,” Daniel translates, “and soon after the surviving pilgrims ran back into the village with tales of slaughter, of the God’s warriors…falling before her wrath. She was adorned with objects of great power and seemed to understand the magic of the Gods.”  
  
“That has to be Sam, right?” Daniel asks, turning to Teal’c for agreement.  
  
Of course it is. Do they know anyone else capable of traveling halfway across the galaxy just to blow the hell out of an insignificant Goa’uld?  
  
The village elder continues, his gestures broadening and his speech picking up speed as a crowd gathers around them. “Before the sun lay down on the horizon, the sky lit with fire and smoke, the very earth itself crying out, shuddering under our feet.”   
  
“And what became of Major Carter?” Teal’c asks.  
  
Daniel inquires and the man makes a sharp horizontal gesture with his hand.  
  
“None came again from that place,” Daniel translates, his voice faltering and Jacob thinks he might finally be getting the picture. “Only ghosts remain.”  
  
No matter who they speak to, the story is the same.   
  
The villagers talk to Daniel in hushed voices about the angel of death, how already the children are warned never to stray near the burned out shell.   
  
Haunted, they say. Cursed.  
  
By the woman with dead eyes who came and set them free.  
  
* * *  
  
 _Anhur sits in audience on his throne, the flickering torchlight glinting off the rich fabric of his robes. At his feet, a wide array of the residents of Theradan kneels, preparing for their yearly offerings as the priests chant lowly in the background.  
  
Tapping his fingers impatiently against the arm of his throne, Anhur scans the crowd, noting any humans who might have potential as good stock for more Jaffa.   
  
His mind is far from the familiar cadence of the rituals, instead he plans his meeting with Tefnut for more symbiotes to replenish his dwindling stock, to rebuild his army. She grows very old, her production dropping off dangerously, but Anhur hopes to not need her much longer. Once his army has grown to reasonable numbers again, he will be secure enough to risk contacting Olokun for safe passage to the next meeting of the System Lords.   
  
If that meeting goes as planned, he will easily find a new Queen. And so much more.  
  
The details and plans twist about in his mind, running various permutations. Despite the new options open to him, he still feels the unwelcome pressure of his desperate situation. Olokun presses closer everyday, tightening the noose around Anhur’s neck. Many things will have to go perfectly right for this to work, Tau’ri host or not.  
  
He must not fail.  
  
Sitting back in his throne, Anhur lets the obeisance of his followers soothe his fractured thoughts; lets the riches they offer him wash away his anxiety. Everything will soon be as it should.  
  
His mind thus occupied, it takes him far longer to pick her out of the crowd than it should. She wears dusty robes, her face lowered to blend in with the other worshipping pilgrims.   
  
In fact, it is not until she stands that he finally sees her, the beige fabric of her cloak falling away to reveal a dark green garment crisscrossed with a small arsenal of weapons.  
  
His Jaffa are similarly slow on the uptake, the first two falling to the rattling fire of her weapons before any think to lift their own.  
  
The pilgrims scatter, screaming, adding to the chaos of the scene. He loses her in the crowd for a moment, a few of them falling here and there in the crossfire, the Jaffa using them as shields, but even this does not slow down the onslaught of her attack.  
  
Anhur watches her slaughter his few remaining Jaffa without compunction, bodies piling at her feet, a stray staff blast to her shoulder making her stumble, but not fall. He feels exposed as his warriors’ numbers dwindle, realizing with growing trepidation that he probably shouldn’t have killed his twenty best Jaffa in a rage at her escape.  
  
‘No shit, Einstein,’ his host spits, having crawled back out of his dark corner at her reappearance.  
  
Anhur silences him with a well-placed lancet of agony, driving him back. The host foolishly hopes she brings death, but Anhur knows better. She is too weak.  
  
Having killed all his guard and chased off the villagers, she at last turns her weapons on him. His personal shield already protects him. He knows she can’t hurt him, even if she wants to.  
  
“Couldn’t stay away, could you?” he taunts, just to see the fire burn in her eyes.  
  
He’s disappointed though, for when she looks at him there is nothing in her gaze but ice-cold certainty.  
  
She lifts a strange contraption to her lips that his still-reeling host recognizes a moment too late. Small darts penetrate the shield, imbedding themselves in his neck. He feels the effects almost immediately.  
  
As he stumbles to his knees, his last glance is of her bearing down on them.  
  
He never factored her into his plans.  
  
Fool._


	6. Whatever Remains

They’re dreaming.  
  
Of all the agonies of being a host, dreaming is the worst. In the forced surrender of slumber there are no longer clear lines drawn between the possessor and the possessed. Dreams flit in and out of their united subconscious and it is impossible to separate them: violence, sex, joy, simple happiness, memories worn thin by time and obsession.  
  
Jack doesn’t want to claim any of them as his own.   
  
While awake he keeps himself busy with the monotonous mantra of _this is not me, this is not me_. Constant resistance like the force between two opposing magnetic poles maintains a dead zone between them. Between what is Jack and what is _it_.   
  
But, in the rare times that the beast sleeps, dragging Jack down with it, the resistance dissolves and everything bleeds together in a tangle of primordial drives and desires. Strangely, the worst moments are not the graphic images of brutal violence. It is the distant, constant aching need for simple freedom. The desire for, above all things, independence, to exist without constant struggle. It’s the worst because Jack can’t quite be sure that is him.  
  
Jack’s not ready to acknowledge that the snake might have a soul, too.   
  
The ancient memory is like a gentle, tickling whisper, the freedom and base comfort of a simpler life in primeval waters, not dependant on unwilling hosts. A tiny, suppressed part of the snake still longs for it.  
  
Jack never wanted to know that to a Goa’uld the cold sharpness of space is a daily torture dominated only by the stronger need to control. To never be helpless ever again.  
  
He doesn’t want any part of it. But when they sleep, he has no choice. It’s the closest they ever get to being truly one entity.  
  
It’s like that again today, everything smashed together and impossible to separate, only he’s pretty sure they’re awake.  
  
They are no longer in the temple on Theradan, that much is clear. Instead they are lying on the floor of a large cavern that Jack knows he should recognize somehow, but thoughts are slow and stilted, clumsily dancing just out of reach.   
  
Something is broken.  
  
Gingerly sitting up, everything around them blurs, edges smearing, the sound of water dripping somewhere amplified almost to the point of pain.  
  
Have they been…drugged?  
  
The snake isn’t paying attention to Jack or his hypothesis though; his focus is riveted to a dark shape against the wall.  
  
“What have you done?” Anhur slurs, anger, as always, washing away any caution or forethought.  
  
Movement, out of the corner of their eye, finally coming into some sort of focus.  
  
Carter.   
  
Oh, God.  
  
Jack remembers now. Remembers watching her take on a small army of Jaffa, recognizing the calm edge to her desperation that marked her as someone with nothing left to lose. Someone who knew the odds were stacked against her and didn’t care.  
  
Why the hell had she come back?  
  
Anhur struggles to his feet, intent on catching her. Punishing her. She smoothly steps out of reach, her outlines dragging behind as if caught on the stone walls.   
  
She isn’t armed. Jesus, this can’t be happening again.  
  
Anhur swipes a hand out at her, missing by inches, nearly toppling to the floor. Reaching out for the wall, he stumbles after her.   
  
She remains always one step ahead until she pauses under an archway of sorts, wavering just out of reach. They lurch closer, stepping across some invisible boundary. Just as he finally touches her, fingers against her skin, their body is lit up as if on fire, searing all their senses, catching them completely off guard.  
  
The snake tries to back away, to escape the deadly pulse, but Carter is there, her hands fisted in their robes, forming an inescapable vise, locking them in place as much as the invisible force that is trying to tear them in two.  
  
The pain is unlike anything either of them has ever experienced, nothing comparable found even in the fathomless, vicious memories of the snake. Anhur tries everything to hold on, clawing at Jack’s consciousness, twining itself around him, threatening to take Jack with it, desperately trying to save any small part of itself by imbedding deep inside Jack like nettles snapping off in his flesh.  
  
The pressure builds, a scream ripping out of their throat, and Jack can’t tell anymore, doesn’t know what is him, what is it, what is dying, what is being left behind.   
  
When the force finally lets go, dumping him forward to the dirt, he’s burning hot, shards of pain slicing into his spine.  
  
Then she’s there, catching him, dragging him away, stopping only to press a cool cloth to his forehead.  
  
Jack takes a deep, shuddering breath. His body is hesitant to follow the impulse, his eyes opening and closing reluctantly with his commands.  
  
“Carter,” he croaks, and he’s startled to hear the word actually emerge from his mouth, surprised to find he’s back in control. “Carter,” he repeats and the cloth pauses, her face leaning closer. He grabs blindly, clenching his hands in her shirt, pulling her down to hear his rasped words.   
  
“You should have killed me.”  
  
Her face wavers in his vision, darkness crawling in on all sides, and he thinks he hears her speak just as he lets go.  
  
“I know.”  
  
* * *  
  
The first thing Jack is aware of is the throbbing in his head, like a drum echoing each heartbeat. An inescapable reminder that, of all the things he may wish, he is not dead. The idle thought of ‘where am I?’ results in eyelids opening.  
  
Thought. Action. Will.  
  
This is the way it used to work.   
  
Before _it_.  
  
Under the gonglike beat of his pulse, there is a tiny bubble of hope and he forces himself to reach out, to dig around for the other presence.   
  
It’s gone. Or is it?  
  
Everything’s too jumbled to tell.  
  
He blinks, but nothing clears. His vision is cloudy and unfocused and he can’t make sense of the space around him.  
  
Trying to push up on one elbow is useless. He doesn’t have the strength, his arm trembling erratically under him before dumping him back on the floor. It’s not just his arm though, he realizes as he risks taking stock of his body. Every muscle feels on fire.  
  
He starts when gentle fingers slide across his forehead. Looking up, his eyes finally focus on Carter leaning over him, her palm pressing down, blessedly cool against the heat of his feverish flesh.  
  
Her arm slides under his shoulders. Lifting him to a sitting position, she slips pills into his mouth, offers water to wash them down. It’s too much effort, this simple task, his vision graying out around the edges.  
  
A moan slips out of his lips and she lowers him gently back to the floor.  
  
Only then does he smell it, the sick aroma of burned flesh. No matter how much it feels like it, he knows he’s not the one burning.   
  
His fingers find her arm, brushing right below the singed fabric and dried blood of her wound.  
  
She’d come back for him.  
  
Carter makes a soothing sound at the back of her throat, her cool palm resting once again on his forehead, and he lets his eyes close. Oblivion tugs him back from the pain and the fire, and he doesn’t bother to fight it.  
  
It’s not quite sleep, just an indeterminable period of hallucinations and delirium occasionally punctuated by lucidity. Sometimes he’s Jack again, but most of the time Anhur is there, whispering in his ear.  
  
He’s weaker each time he wakes, his body shutting down piece by piece until he’s completely bound by debilitating stillness. Time stretches so long between each breath that he seems to slip in and of death, each new infusion of oxygen stealing him back to life. He longs for the end more than he ever has before.  
  
Not even Carter’s hands, insistent and desperate against his face, can make him hold on.  
  
His body gives up the fight, and he gladly follows.  
  
* * *  
  
Despite Jack’s best intentions, consciousness finds him again. Things are steadier, clearer and, though his breathing is now strong and even, none of the pain has faded.  
  
A cool cloth presses against his forehead and he opens his eyes to look into the face of a stranger. Startled, he tries to sit up, but his body fails him.  
  
“Hush,” the woman says, one hand easily pressing him back down. “You are safe. I am Linna, daughter of Gairwyn.”  
  
He thinks the second name must mean something, but his brain is still sluggish. Not that it really matters. If she wants to harm him there is little he can do about it. To judge from the weakness of his body, he’s been out of it for a while.  
  
“How long?” he croaks.  
  
She smiles, sitting back on her heels and wiping her hands on her skirts. “It has been fifteen days since the Hammer took you.”  
  
The Hammer. Cimmeria. Things are beginning to make sense.  
  
“Carter?” he asks, equally dreading and welcoming the thought that she might have left him behind.  
  
Linna nods. “She is well. Her own wounds have healed nicely.”  
  
“Wounds?” Jack asks.  
  
“Yes. A deep burn here,” Linna says, pointing to her own shoulder.  
  
Staff blast. He remembers now. More than he’d like.  
  
“Sam brought me here when she began to fear for your life.”  
  
Jack closes his eyes. It’s salvation he didn’t want, never would have asked for.  
  
And yet, here he is.  
  
“Are you in pain?”  
  
Jack figures his discomfort must be etched into his face because she doesn’t wait for his answer, offering him a warm, bitter drink. He grimaces at the taste, but she simply urges him to take more.  
  
“It will dull the pain and fight your fever,” she tells him.  
  
He dutifully finishes off the cup. “What exactly is wrong with me?”  
  
Her cool hand touches his arm. “You and your body need time. You must learn each other again. It was the same for Kendra in the beginning.”  
  
Kendra. Right. This is all because of the snake and the damn Hammer. His body is purging itself of Anhur, leaving nothing behind but echoes. They dig into his mind like splinters, tiny invasive pieces of the monster left behind.  
  
Jack tries not to think of the snake’s cells being broken down and absorbed into his body. Just knows that he’ll never be rid of him, not completely.  
  
“Rest,” Linna says. “Your strength will return in time.”  
  
Lucky him.  
  
* * *  
  
 _They are heading down to her cell again.  
  
She’s passed the worst of the withdrawal now, lying still and quiet on her narrow cot in the corner. Gaunt and worn, but no longer hysterical.  
  
‘Just kill me,’ she’d pleaded the last time he watched her shiver on the floor at his feet, her hands swiping at invisible phantoms.   
  
But maybe that hysteria had been easier to watch than this listlessness. The way she doesn’t even bother to protest as the Jaffa drag her up to a sitting position.  
  
“Do you recognize this?” Anhur asks, holding out a knife. It’s the one she’d dared to steal from one of his Jaffa. The one she’d pressed to their neck.  
  
Carter’s eyes dart to the object and just as quickly drop away. She doesn’t answer.  
  
The blow is as quick as it is predictable.  
  
She’s still holding her cheek when he speaks again. “I asked you if you recognized this.”  
  
“Yes,” she says, her face still carefully averted. Her voice is nearly as insubstantial as her body now.  
  
Lifting the blade, Anhur presses it gently against the base of her throat.   
  
Jack doesn’t miss her reaction, the relief on her face. She’s still hoping there is another visit to the sarcophagus in the near future, is still desperate for it. He wishes to God that’s where this is heading.   
  
“Good,” Anhur says. “Then you will know why this is happening.”  
  
In one quick swipe, the knife slices down through the thin fabric of her shirt, carelessly raising a line of blood down her torso on its journey. She gasps, unsteady hands pulling the gaping edges together. Only now does she look up, terror and painful understanding on her face.  
  
“No,” she says, sharp and insistent, something in her eyes finally coming into focus.   
  
She repeats that single word over and over, punctuating each weak blow with it as she lashes out at him. He’s finally forced to stun her, the back of her head slamming sickly against the wall.  
  
Jack wants to close his eyes but has no control. The thing wants him to watch. Always watching.  
  
And today, even worse, it wants him to *feel*. The snake holds nothing back from him, sensations firing straight to the brain. Impossible to ignore, to circumvent.  
  
The snake makes him enjoy it.  
_  
Jack jerks out of the dream, choking back the Goa’uld curse on his tongue. He breathes deeply to banish the images from his mind, to erase the sensations crawling up his spine.  
  
 _Not me, not me, not me._  
  
The ceiling above him is inscrutable, swathed in shadow, pressing down on him.  
  
It’s night again. Lying still, he can hear the smooth cadence of Linna’s breath from where she sleeps on the other side of the room. Beyond that, he can feel someone watching him.  
  
Carter’s sitting in one corner, her knees drawn tight up against her chest, staring at him in the dim light.  
  
He meets her gaze across the room, and it takes far too long to shake off the predatory echo vibrating through his mind, to see her as Carter and not just a plaything.  
  
He wonders if she sees it.  
  
Looking away, he stares up at the dark ceiling again.  
  
Fucking Anhur. He’s a bastard even from the goddamned grave.  
  
He remembers her fingers on his face that first night, her physical proximity. He’d been too out of it to remember at the time, to understand the anomaly in the situation.   
  
He’s lucid now, and he thinks she knows it too because she doesn’t approach, doesn’t touch him again, just watches him from her corner, her arm cradled to her chest as if nursing a phantom injury.  
  
He doesn’t sleep again that night.  
  
But he remembers.  
  
* * *  
  
When it is clear that Jack is no longer in danger, Linna packs up her remedies and returns to her family.   
  
Just like that, it’s the two of them alone again.  
  
They don’t speak, don’t touch unless it’s absolutely necessary, two strangers inhabiting the same limited space. She orbits around him but rarely approaches. He’s never seen her so aimless, so adrift without focus.  
  
He’s torn constantly between guilt and hate, leaving no room for whatever other feelings might have been there before. He hates the way she flinches when he catches her staring. Hates that she won’t speak. Hates the way she looks at him as if expecting something from him.  
  
Hates that when he looks at her, all he can see is what he did to her.  
  
 _Not me, not me._  
  
As he teaches himself to once again walk of his own volition, to lift his arms, to blink his eyes or interpret the signals fed by his body, he also watches Carter and her horrifying lethargy. It’s the final evidence of what he suspects, but doesn’t want to accept: there really is barely anything left of her.  
  
The purging of the symbiote from his body leaves him weak, but he’s stubbornly building back his strength, and with it, his anger. He watches her, feeding his rage until it’s nearly blinding.  
  
There’s only one other person here to take it out on.  
  
Carter passes by the door, a flash of sunshine and color.  
  
He forces himself to look away.  
  
* * *  
  
Weeks of this limbo creep by and soon enough he can finally walk and lift and take care of himself. She lets him gradually take over the daily chores of their small homestead without a word of protest. Not that he expects one.  
  
It’s the fine motor skills that still escape him, the minute movements of fingers, the combination of multiple skills at once.  
  
He works at it with a small ball, little more than a child’s toy brought to him by Linna, rolling it between his fingers, teaching his body to respond properly. He tries to focus down on the minutiae to the exclusion of all else.   
  
Especially her.  
  
It’s frustrating as hell, the loss of manual dexterity that he once prided himself on. Of course, there are lots of abilities he used to claim to that now escape him completely.   
  
Except denial. He’s still got that one honed to a fine art.  
  
He tosses the ball from one hand to the other, his fingers contracting too slowly, the ball falling to the ground. He curses, leaning down to pick it up, when he catches a glimpse of her.  
  
She’s hovering again, just out of sight. Always goddamned hovering. She takes an involuntary step back when he turns to look at her, for once refusing to break contact.  
  
The feel of her gaze on his skin has been rubbing him raw for days and he does it without thinking. Before she can escape, he lashes out, grabbing her arm, his fingers squeezing tightly as he pulls her back around to face him.  
  
His first instinct is to break the arm, to feel the bone snap under his fingers as he has dozens of times before.  
  
She knows it, too. She doesn’t back away, her eyes almost begging him to do it.  
 _  
‘She deserves it.’_  
  
Shit.  
  
He drops her arm as if burned, shoving back away from her and the sickening thought floating through his mind. He stumbles on the uneven ground. Recovering his balance, he escapes into the forest.  
  
He comes back eventually. He always does. He’s bonded to her in some sick way, a connection forged in violence and betrayal, something he can’t shake free of no matter how hard he tries.  
  
He considers walking down the mountain and dialing the gate. But to where? Earth?  
  
They’ll want to know…where he’s been, what has happened. Ask him questions and expect him to answer. Maybe expect him to explain why Carter barely functions anymore.  
  
Explain why he isn’t much better himself.  
  
He can’t.  
  
So he stays.  
  
* * *  
  
The dreams aren’t fading but gaining in intensity, lingering in his waking moments until they are like constant background static in his mind, burning through him more fiercely than the fever ever had.  
  
Sometimes he’ll find himself somewhere outside, near the brook or the tumble of rocks on the west side of the mountain’s slope, staring at some insignificant detail. He won’t remember getting there, not right away, and he’ll have to remind himself that no one rules this body anymore, no one but himself.  
  
It’s only when the flashbacks begin to return in hesitant pieces that he realizes losing time might be easier than remembering.  
  
He’d do anything to forget.  
  
Carter is always nearby, probably trying to ensure he won’t walk off a cliff, won’t endanger what she put the last of herself into preserving.   
  
She has no right to ask this of him.  
  
But so it goes, day after day, the pattern established, setting everything else into motion as the anger builds, drawing him almost tight enough to snap.  
  
He just wants her to be someplace else for a while. She’s the last thing he needs to see at the end of one of these spells.  
  
At least until the morning he finds himself on the edge of the meadow, his hands shaking and the hollow trace of the damn dead snake’s voice in his ear.  
  
He feels her gaze on him and slips away into the trees, his pace quickening with each step.  
  
As usual, she follows, just far enough away. He suspects she’s deluded enough to think he hasn’t noticed her. Speeding up around a bend, he steps off the path, concealing himself behind a tree.  
  
At first he plans nothing more than getting her off his trail, letting her slip by and taking off in a different direction. Even a few blissful hours of solitude might be enough to calm him, to shake free of the latest image haunting him. He just needs to get away from her.  
  
But then she’s almost even with the tree and he’s circling around and grabbing her from behind.  
  
She spins to look at him and he digs his fingers into her shoulders.  
  
“What the hell do you want, Carter?” he snaps, shaking her a little. “Why can’t you leave me alone for even a minute?”   
  
Of course she doesn’t answer. She just stands there looking up at him, letting him manhandle her without protest, which only pisses him off even more. There’s something painfully familiar about the expression on her face and he says it without thinking.  
  
“Do you miss it?”  
  
She’s breathing hard as he leans in closer, and he feels a surge of primordial pride when she turns her face slightly away, her eyes drifting closed as if in submission.  
  
He pushes her back against the tree, hears the air escape her lungs in a rush. “Is this what you want?”  
  
Pinning her there with his body, he traps her hands above her head, his fingers digging ruthlessly into her wrists. She struggles against him, her body bucking under his. He feels a rush at the familiar sensations, his body already responding, straining for the feel of her body helpless under his.  
  
 _‘She is ours.’_  
  
The intruding voice reverberates through Jack’s skull like a bomb, shattering the blinding haze.  
  
What the _fuck_ is he doing?  
  
He drops his hold on her, pulling back away, but now her hands are keeping him there, no longer pushing him away, but holding him close, forcing his lips against hers. When he manages to look her in the eye there is no fear, just need mixed with furious loathing.   
  
Is that for him or for herself?  
  
“Sam,” he rasps, and God, there is some painful last thread of affection surviving after all. It hurts worse than everything else.  
  
He reaches for her face, barely daring to make contact.   
  
She slaps his hand away, shoving roughly at his chest. She shakes her head, making it clear that the last thing she wants from him is tenderness. Instead she reaches for his belt and, for a moment, he considers letting her. With everything that has happened between them, what can this possibly hurt?  
  
 _“Jack,” she whispers, her face turned away from what he’s doing to her, from the unwelcome hands on her skin.  
  
There is nothing of yearning or softness in the way she says it. It’s simply a desperate plea, asking him to stop this. To not let the snake do this to them.  
  
God help him, he can’t.  
  
He can’t stop it.  
  
‘You don’t want to,’ it taunts. ‘She is ours.’_  
  
Jack grabs her wrists, pulling her hands away from his belt. Tugging her up against him, he watches her face as she stares just past his shoulder, blinking against her tears.   
  
She never cried while she was his prisoner. Not even once.  
  
He lowers his forehead to her fingers, yearning for absolution he knows is never coming.   
  
He can feel her trembling.   
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers against her hands. “I am so damn sorry.”  
  
Pressing his lips to her fingers, he steps away and heads down towards the meadow.   
  
He doesn’t look back.  
  
* * *  
  
His bag is packed with bare essentials less than a day later. She’s sitting with her face down, intent on some project and the glint of the sun off her hair is almost blinding.  
 _  
Silky smooth, twining through his fingers…_  
  
Jack roughly shakes off the intruding image and deliberately steps into her light, his shadow falling darkly over her. The change in illumination brings her face up, but rather than questioning or surprised, she simply looks resigned. She already knows.   
  
At least he is still that predictable.  
  
“I’m going,” he says, his free hand gesturing down the mountain in the direction of the gate.  
  
She nods, her fingers clenching around a piece of paper in her lap. Holding it out, she gestures for him to take it.   
  
There are dark, angry bruises circling each of her wrists.  
  
Jesus. He only knows one thing for sure anymore: he can’t stay here. Not with her.  
  
Taking the paper from her, he is careful not to brush fingers, not to let so much as a touch pass between them.   
  
_Just in case_ , the note reads in her meticulous script, with ‘Jacob’ and a gate address underneath.  
  
She’s still trying to save him.  
  
“Carter….”-the unspoken words die and stick in his throat, threatening to choke him.  
  
He has no idea what can even be said.  
  
So he stops trying.  
  
She lifts her hand to her chest and then down to the dry grass, patting it twice.  
  
 _I will be here.  
_  
It strikes him that she has no words to ask where he is going and he doesn’t know if she would even want to. But he has no destination, no answers to give her, even if she could come up with the questions.  
  
He can’t promise he will return.  
  
He lets his eyes travel over her features one last time before turning away. As each step takes him further away from her, he is aware only of the feel of her eyes on his back and the continuous stream of nauseating thoughts screaming at the back of his mind.  
  
Maybe she’ll be better off if he never does.


	7. You Can't Go Home Again

There is something distinctly unsettling about stepping through the Stargate without any idea of what to expect on the other side. Jack is used to standard precautions, MALPs, and clear transmissions. Out here on his own, all he can do is dial and hope he’ll come out in one piece on the other side.  
  
And if there’s a part of him that actually hopes not to, he ignores it as best he can. At the very least, he figures he owes her more than a careless death.  
  
But he tries not to think of meaningful ones either.  
  
He’s come to a few inescapable conclusions during the month he’s spent on P5-whatever, one of the many addresses committed to his memory (or maybe Anhur’s memory, but he doesn’t like to think about that). The planet is uninhabited, just miles and miles of forest slopes. He lives off the land, hoping the labor and solitude might make the noise in his head go away.  
  
It doesn’t.  
  
He’s finally beginning to realize that it may never. And he knows he can’t put it off any longer.  
  
Even though he doesn’t need to, he pulls the worn piece of paper from his pocket and stares at her words. He memorized the address long ago, ripped that damning half of the note away, burned it. He’s not sure who he was trying to protect with such paranoia. Maybe it was just habit more than anything.  
  
Then again, acting out of habit is exactly what he’s been struggling with.  
  
He folds the paper carefully in half, slipping it back into his pocket.  
  
It’s time to see the last man in the universe he’d like to, but the only one who might be able to help him.  
  
Stepping out into the harsh desert sun of the latest Tok’ra hideout, they welcome him with the same cautious indifference they always treat the Tau’ri to. Somehow, Jack thinks he deserves more than that. At the very least, suspicion.  
  
After informing him that Jacob is unavailable though, they simply provide him with a bare, cubbyhole of a room and return to ignoring him.  
  
Three days pass as he waits for Jacob to show up. The Tok’ra are as conscientious about avoiding Jack as he is to avoid them. He’d prefer to camp on the surface, rather than be stuck in these claustrophobic caves, if the latest Tok’ra planet hadn’t been yet another scorching desert planet.  
  
He idly wonders at the Tok’ra obsession with deserts, and facts and hypotheses that are not his own well to the surface.   
  
“Shit,” Jack says, pushing to his feet, resigned to pacing the long hallways yet again. As he turns the corner though, it’s Jacob he almost slams headlong into.  
  
Judging from his expression, Jack thinks the other Tok’ra must not have bothered to warn Jacob he was here.  
  
“Jack,” he says, the word a bark of disbelief as he stares as though he’s seeing a ghost.  
  
“In the flesh,” Jack replies.  
  
Jacob takes a long moment, giving himself time to process. “We thought you were…”  
  
He leaves the last word unspoken, but Jack hears it anyway.  
  
 _Dead._  
  
“Yeah,” Jack says with a shrug.  
  
For a moment, he thinks Jacob might actually reach out to touch him, and that’s when he finally makes the connection. Jacob isn’t surprised to see Jack unblended, only surprised to see him alive. And he knows this reaction isn’t so much about Jack being alive, but what it means by association.  
  
It means his daughter is alive too.  
  
Jacob doesn’t actually touch him, instead walking into the room, putting his bag down in the corner, and pulling his jacket off, each task composed of careful motions as he undoubtedly tries to recover.   
  
It’s only then that Jack realizes he’s been staying in his room.   
  
“We went to Anhur’s planet,” Jacob says. “Daniel, Teal’c, and I.”  
  
The names are like specters; things Jack knows once meant something to him, only now there’s too much space between, too much atmosphere obscuring his life before.  
  
“Theradan?” he manages to ask. Even the word alone is enough to choke him. He wonders if Olokun has bothered to take it over yet.  
  
 _Why should you care?_  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
Doesn’t. Doesn’t. Doesn’t.  
  
“She blew it all to hell.”  
  
Jack focuses back on Jacob. “The planet?” he asks, feeling a sick thrill flutter in his gut.  
  
All those people…  
  
Jacob shakes his head. “The mother ship.”  
  
Jack doesn’t know whether to be relieved or just horrified at the risk she took. This could have easily turned out so very different. And he thinks Carter was very well aware of that.   
  
He wonders if she’s a bit disappointed too.  
  
“Yeah,” he says, unable to verbalize anything other than basic acknowledgement of the information. Fighting the urge to pace, he takes a truncated half step, coming to an abrupt stop and sticking his hands in his pockets. “Okay.”  
  
Jacob’s eyes narrow and Jack has the impression he’s being analyzed, each word and gesture being mined for meaning.   
  
“She must have been pissed as hell to take it that far,” Jacob comments.  
  
He knows Jacob is reaching, trying to get information out of him without having to ask point blank. Good luck with that.  
  
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Jack shrugs, not particularly caring that he’s appearing overly indifferent. It’s safer. He’s not really here to comment on Carter’s mindset, doesn’t want to have to examine it too closely himself.  
  
Doesn’t want to have to confess to, of all people, Jacob.  
  
“What, that’s it?” Jacob snaps, the edge of his temper finally making an appearance.  
  
“What exactly would you like to hear?” Jack bites out, his own anger threatening his forced complacency. “Because I would dearly love to know the right thing to say to you in this situation.”  
  
Jacob deflates a bit, looking mollified by the outburst as if Jack’s rage is somehow easier to deal with than his indifference. “She’s my daughter, Jack,” he says, almost an apology.  
  
Jack drops down onto one of the hard benches lining the room. “Yeah, well, she’s not exactly a stranger to me either,” he says. He wishes to God she were.  
  
Jacob acknowledges the point with a weary nod.  
  
Jack doesn’t know what Jacob had expected to hear. April Fool’s? That this had all been some nightmare or practical joke? Like they might all be able to go back to the way things had been before, just because they had both been unlucky enough to survive?  
  
“Just tell me where she is,” Jacob says.  
  
Jack had known, coming here, that this was a conversation he’d never be able to avoid. “I don’t think she wants…,” he hedges.  
  
“This isn’t about what she wants,” Jacob says. “Someone has to look out for her.”  
  
 _We could._  
  
Jack flinches, but doesn’t argue. “Cimmeria.”  
  
“Of course,” he says. Picking his bag back up, Jacob heads out of the room.  
  
“Where are you going?” Jack says, chasing him into the hall.  
  
“Where the hell do you think?”  
  
“You can’t go through the gate there, Jacob. You know that.”  
  
“Good thing I’ve got a ship and a lot of time on my hands then, isn’t it?” he throws back over his shoulder.   
  
Jack falls behind, losing sight of Jacob around the next curve. He came here very specifically to talk to Jacob, and he sure as hell hasn’t worked his way around to it yet. Which means he can wait around here for another week until Jacob reappears, or he can lock himself into a very small, enclosed space with him.  
  
And go back to Cimmeria.  
  
God, talk about a rock and a hard place.  
  
A few Tok’ra stick their heads into the halls to see what the commotion is all about.   
  
That pretty much decides it for Jack. One Tok’ra is better than a dozen, after all, Carter’s dad or not.  
  
Pushing back into motion, he jogs after Jacob. “Wait up.”  
  
* * *  
  
They spend the first day of travel in complete silence, which probably would have driven Jack crazy just a few short months ago. Strange that it took a snake in the head for him to finally master the art of stillness.  
  
In fact, it’s only their imminent arrival that pushes Jack to engage Jacob in actual conversation.  
  
“How much longer?” he asks, and Jacob jumps a little, caught off guard after so many silent hours.  
  
“Maybe two hours,” Jacob says. He nods at the seat next to him and Jack reluctantly slides into it.  
  
They sit there a while, both men intent on the streaking stars ahead of them rather than the subject on both of their minds.  
  
“You didn’t check me to make sure it was really gone,” Jack observes eventually, not quite able to speak the Goa’uld’s name.  
  
Jacob sighs, rolling his shoulders. “We can tell, Jack.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“It feels different. You should know that now.”  
  
Jack compares the gentle buzz on his skin he felt when he was near Carter to the crawling sensation he feels now, sitting next to Jacob. He’s still not convinced.  
  
“You really should have checked,” he insists.  
  
Jacob looks at him, abandoning any pretense of concentrating on the controls. “What is this really about, Jack?”  
  
Now or never.  
  
He takes a deep breath.  
  
They’re words he’s been rehearsing, trying to figure out how to verbalize during that long month on the forest planet, but he still trips over them. “Have you ever heard…I mean, is it possible…for some part of the…,” he swallows, forcing the word out, “symbiote to remain behind?”  
  
Jacob’s brow creases as he leans towards Jack, clearly unnerved to hear him sounding so hesitant. “You mean like memories?”  
  
“No,” Jack says, fingers digging into his temples in agitation. “It’s like…it’s still in here, trying to make me do things.” He dares to look over at Jacob. “Have you ever heard of anything like that?”  
  
“Anhur is dead, Jack.” Spoken with the slow concern of one fearing for someone’s sanity.  
  
“I know that,” he snaps, pushing to his feet.   
  
It’s possible he’s just crazy.  
  
 _Or just weak._  
  
Shut. Up.  
  
“Jack,” Jacob says placatingly. “You’ve suffered a major trauma-.”  
  
Jack cuts him off, raising both hands palms out. “Really, let’s not.” He doesn’t want therapy or pity; he just wants goddamn answers. “Let me know when we’re there.”  
  
With that, Jack retreats into the hold, closing the door between them.  
  
He remains locked up in there until the ship shudders against the atmosphere of Cimmeria, landing with a soft thump at what he can only assume is a safe distance from the hammer.  
  
Jacob enters the hold, gathering his things without a word, clearly not wanting to waste any time with small talk, only pausing when he realizes Jack is still sitting motionlessly against the bulkhead.  
  
Jacob looks over at him. “You coming?”  
  
Jack wants to. God, does he want to.  
  
He misses her, his mind wandering to her far too often. He thinks that’s him, but he can’t be completely sure. Even the chance, the _possibility_ of that being it… No.  
  
He won’t let any of that touch her ever again.  
  
“No,” Jack says. “I’m staying here.”  
  
Jacob is surprised but shrugs as if he’s too tired to bother arguing. “Ok,” he says. “I might be a few days.”  
  
Jack doesn’t think he will be but nods just the same. Before Jacob disappears out the hatch, he calls out after him. “She…doesn’t need to know I’m here.”  
  
Jacob glances back, his jaw clenched, and Jack knows he’s cataloging this away as yet another clue. By now they must be building up to an uncomfortably clear picture of what Anhur has done to them, exactly how much he whittled away at them.  
  
Jacob deserves to know though, before he’s forced to see first hand just how little of his daughter is left.  
  
Jack drops his eye, turning his chair away, and hears the door slide shut after Jacob.  
  
He’s back in little over a day, and Jack’s a little impressed he makes it that long. He knows how hard it is to see her like that.  
  
“How is she?” Jack asks, not quite looking Jacob in the eye.  
  
Jacob drops his pack to the floor with a careless, angry thunk. “I think you know.”  
  
Jack winces. “I mean…does she need anything? Supplies?”  
  
Jacob turns to look at him with that damn piercing gaze of his, pausing long enough to make Jack think he must be discussing something with Selmak. “She’s been taken in by a family.”  
  
“Linna,” Jack guesses.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Okay,” Jack says, leaning back in his seat. Linna will watch over Carter. She’s in as good a set of hands as he can hope under the circumstances.  
  
“You can’t honestly think she should stay there!”  
  
Ah, and here is the anger Jack expected. “I think Carter has made her choice pretty clear,” he says as diplomatically as he can.  
  
“She’s in no position to make that kind of decision and you damn well know it.”  
  
Jack’s self-imposed stillness shatters with alarming ease, his voice lashing out. “What exactly is her alternative? Live with the Tok’ra like a pet? Go back to Earth to be treated like some sorry, broken thing? With everyone walking around thinking they understand what she went through. What _I_ did to-,” he breaks off, realizing what he almost said.  
  
Jacob has gone completely still, watching him with growing wariness.   
  
It’s about damn time someone did, Jack thinks.  
  
“What _Anhur_ did, Jack,” Jacob says carefully, as if talking down a spooked animal or a small child. “Not you.”  
  
Jack drags his hands across his face, barely resists digging his fingers in. “How exactly does that work again? Because I’m having a damn hard time telling the difference.”  
  
“Jack-.”  
  
“Don’t,” Jack snaps, cutting him off. “Don’t pretend there’s some magic fucking answer that can make this all go away.”  
  
Jacob opens his mouth as if to try but seems to think better of it, lowering himself down into the other chair.  
  
Jack’s beginning to realize how stupid he’d been to come to Jacob in the first place. What the hell had he hoped to accomplish?  
  
“What about you?” Jacob eventually asks. “What will you do?”  
  
Jack shifts in his chair because suddenly it’s so damn clear. He knows why he came to Jacob. And it has nothing to do with answers. “Do the Tok’ra have any use for a slightly unstable human spy?”  
  
Jacob’s face betrays only a split second of something like disappointment before Selmak smoothly takes over. “There is always need of a man with your varied talents, Colonel O’Neill.”  
  
Jack eyes Selmak warily, not exactly thrilled with her sudden appearance after days of blissful silence. It’s easier to pretend she doesn’t exist when she keeps to herself. He rubs at the back of his neck, refusing to shudder visibly.  
  
“You will not return to Earth?” she asks.  
  
“No.” Not while Carter sits broken and silent on another planet so far from home. Not while Anhur still controls him from the grave. Maybe not ever.  
  
 _Coward._  
  
“Give me a mission,” he says, forcing himself to meet the Tok’ra’s eyes. “Anything. Just give me something to do other than sit here and slowly lose my mind.”  
  
Selmak considers him a moment before taking the controls and lifting the ship away from Cimmeria. “As you wish,” she says as they break atmosphere, the abrupt release of gravity bottoming out Jack’s stomach. Or maybe that’s just relief.  
  
It’s another long, silent trip back.  
  
* * *  
  
The Tok’ra give Jack a tel’tac held together with little more than duct tape and wishful thinking and introduce him to his first contact.  
  
It’s a start, a distraction. It’s enough.  
  
The day he packs the ship with a few provisions and prepares to leave the Tok’ra home world behind, Jacob comes to see him off.  
  
“Linna was teaching her to sew,” he says.  
  
It’s not exactly the farewell Jack expected. “What?”  
  
Jacob steps towards Jack until he is uncomfortably close. “She was sitting on the floor with the children, learning to _sew_ ,” Jacob repeats.  
  
God.  
  
Jacob is still watching him closely, clearly waiting for some response to this startling revelation.  
  
“I don’t…,” Jack starts, only to stall out. He clears his throat and tries again. “I don’t know what you want from me, Jake.”  
  
Honesty may be the only thing he has left.  
  
Jacob takes a deep breath and hits Jack on the shoulder, half-frustration, half-grudging affection. “Yeah. I know,” he says, squeezing his arm and stepping back away. “Just try not to do anything stupid.”  
  
Jack manages a weak grin. “You know me.”  
  
Jacob’s looking inscrutable again. “Yeah. That’s what they tell me.”  
  
His disapproval shouldn’t sting as much as it does.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jack says as he turns away from Jacob. He may see it as desertion or dereliction of duty, but Jack’s just trying to survive.  
  
“They think you’re dead,” Jacob says, one final parting shot.   
  
Jack pauses, looking back at him.   
  
The SGC will continue to think he’s dead unless he chooses to prove them wrong. Jacob is making sure he gets that.  
  
“I understand,” Jack says.  
  
It’s probably better this way.  
  
Jacob nods once and walks away.  
  
And just like that, Jack O’Neill, AWOL Air Force Colonel, former false god, expatriated Tau’ri, disappears into the underground.  
  
Phantom.  
  
He spends the next five years searching for an answer that doesn’t exist.  
  
The day he hears about the fall of Earth, he listens to Anhur’s glee with half an ear; drinks seven Darkinian ales; and almost dies setting off three cases of weapons grade naquadah underneath one of Anubis’s drone laboratories.  
  
He watches the explosion from orbit.  
  
 _That was foolish, human. Are you trying to get us killed?_  
  
Next time he’ll try harder.  
  
His luck can’t last forever.


	8. Epilogue

When Jacob can’t possibly put it off any longer, he travels to Earth.  
  
“I’ve seen Sam,” he tells them. The hope that lights up Daniel’s face is more than Jacob can handle. Turning, he paces to the window, looking down on the Stargate.   
  
_“You can’t hide here forever,” Jacob tells her, watching the clumsy work of her fingers on a small scrap of floral fabric. “This isn’t who you are.”  
  
The needle slips, a perfect pearl of blood rising on the pad of her finger. Sam stares at the small wound, her eyes slipping out of focus, going somewhere Jacob can’t follow.  
  
“Sam,” he says, touching her arm, wrapping his fingers around her wrist when she doesn’t respond. “Sam!”  
  
Her eyes gradually shift up to his face, her arm tugging free of his grasp. He feels a beat of hope at the reaction, but once free, she merely slips the injured digit into her mouth.   
  
She might as well be eight years old again, nursing a skinned knee. Only even then there would have been a sort of daredevil pride in the injury.  
  
She’s staring at nothing.   
  
Eventually, she picks her cloth back up and begins again.  
  
“They deserve to know,” Jacob says.  
  
She continues to stitch._  
  
“She’s the same,” Jacob says.  
  
He doesn’t see any point in telling her team the truth: she’s worse. She’s still silent, but before, at least there had been some spark of life, the obsessive drive of a mission to keep her going. Now there isn’t even that anymore.  
  
Now she’s just a body going through the motions.  
  
“And Jack?” Daniel asks. Jacob feels his spine stiffen. “Was he with her?”  
  
“No,” Jacob says, and, technically, it’s the truth. If anyone understands the game of semantics, it’s Daniel, right? That would be funny if it weren’t so fucking sad.  
  
“Anhur?” Teal’c asks.  
  
“Dead,” Jacob confirms.  
  
He leaves it at that, letting them think the worst.  
  
It’s close enough to the truth. Jack doesn’t want anyone coming after him. Jacob wonders if Jack has managed to convince himself that sometimes the gaps are easier to deal with than the truth.   
  
Easier for whom, exactly? Jacob wants to know. Is it better for them to think he’s dead rather than a deserter?  
  
‘Jacob,’ Selmak admonishes, for once being in the position to understand Jack more than Jacob. Her sympathy echoes like feedback through his brain, canceling out his own anger.  
  
“Is she coming back?”  
  
“No,” Jacob says, refocusing on Daniel. “I don’t think she is.”  
  
“But you know where she is.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Daniel’s eyes narrow. “And you aren’t going to tell us.”  
  
Jacob can’t say, in that moment, what keeps him from telling them. Surely someone more than Jack and he should know, someone who’s not flaunting death at every turn, someone who can look out for her if ( _when_ ) they get themselves killed, or she might be lost forever. But maybe that’s the point, and he’s not sure who he’s trying to protect anymore.  
  
“She wants to be left alone,” Jacob finds himself saying. “Could you do that, if you know where she is?”  
  
Daniel’s mouth opens, the lie right on the tip of his tongue. Just a beat of defiance before his shoulders sag. “No. I probably couldn’t,” he admits.  
  
Jacob claps Daniel on the shoulder. “Give her time. She knows how to come home when she’s ready.”  
  
It’s amazing how quickly the lies build up, and how little they bother him.  
  
“I can do that,” Daniel says, but Jacob can see it isn’t easy for him, not his first inclination. He wants to rush to her side, to save her, to make things better. Jacob’s not sure they can be.  
  
He swallows hard against a spike of nausea, wishing to hell he didn’t have Selmak’s crystal clear knowledge of what Sam probably went through. Wishes he didn’t have the memory of Jack’s haunted face and the words he didn’t have to say for Jacob to hear them.  
  
“I promise,” Jacob says to Daniel, feeling the need to give him some small thing, to cling to some shred of decency, “if the time ever comes that you really need her, I’ll tell you.”  
  
That’s all he’s willing to give.  
  
* * *  
  
At first Daniel appears on the Tok’ra base every few weeks, sitting with Jacob, discussing inane happenings on Earth. During these visits, Jacob can see the battle going on inside Daniel, fighting between giving Sam what she’s asked and demanding to see her.  
  
He needs her, Jacob understands in these moments. She’s something fundamental to him.  
  
In the end though, Daniel’s conscience always trumps his own needs. Convinced to respect her choices by successfully traversing through the crucible once again, Daniel returns to Earth. Jacob always thinks he looks a bit like a kicked puppy on those days.   
  
He hopes to God these are the right decisions.  
  
The weeks stretch into months; time drawing out longer and longer between each visit. When Jacob hears of Anubis’ plans for Earth, he prepares himself for Daniel’s visit, prepares himself to give Sam up. The stakes are way too high.  
  
But Daniel doesn’t come.  
  
Jacob’s left to assume that three years were long enough to fill the holes left by Sam. They must have found someone else to conjure brilliant saves, to look upon the galaxy with wide-eyed wonder.  
  
Jacob is torn between hating the idea that they may have forgotten her and breathing a sigh of relief. She’s his alone this way. Silent. Damaged. But safe.  
  
Jacob has freely dedicated his life to this fight against the Goa’uld. He can accept that they probably won’t win, that even if they do, the Tok’ra won’t long survive it. This he can live with.  
  
But he won’t sacrifice his daughter. Not what’s left of her. Not again.  
  
That’s when he finally begins to understand Jack a little. To forgive him his weaknesses. It’s hard not to when his own are so blatantly on display.  
  
Jack is still fighting for them, whether they know it or not.   
  
It matters.  
  
* * *  
  
It’s not until two years after Earth’s destruction that Daniel finally shows up to ask the question Jacob’s been dreading.  
  
“We need Sam,” he says.  
  
We, not I. Jacob knows Daniel isn’t here for himself this time. It’s almost worse.  
  
“Where is she?” Daniel’s eyes are shuttered, his build lean. He’s become a hardened warrior somewhere in the intervening years. It chills Jacob to the bone.  
  
“Cimmeria,” Jacob says.  
  
The old Daniel might have looked slightly chagrined by the obviousness of that location, maybe annoyed that he hadn’t figured it out himself, but this new, tempered Daniel merely nods and heads back towards the Stargate.  
  
Jacob thinks of his daughter, her swift hands and dead eyes.   
  
“She may not be able to help you,” Jacob warns Daniel’s retreating back. It doesn’t matter that she’ll want to. Even Sam Carter has her limits. Limits are pretty much all that’s left of her now.  
  
He’s not sure if Daniel hears him or not.  
  
It doesn’t really matter, Jacob decides.   
  
They’re only words.


End file.
